Camp Mom: Day 37

[My son's summer-camp this year is a do-it-yourself affair with a couple of friends from his special-ed class hanging out at our house. I'll post a run-down of our activities daily, for others who may be looking for ideas. If you're doing something fun, too, please share it in the comments.]

Tuesday is bowling day, so we started out with our traditional two games, boys on one lane, girls on the other. Then back home through the steady rain to warm up in the kitchen with a baking project.

We followed instructions from the About Family Crafts site to make Alphabet Biscuits. Shaping refrigerated biscuit dough into letters proved challenging for our campers, especially my son, who played with the sticky stuff so much it became unworkable.

Eventually, though, we got some kind of bloppy letters on a cookie sheet, brushed them with melted butter, sprinkled on grated Parmesan (for most campers) or cinnamon-sugar (for one), and baked ... a little too long. But despite the bit of burn and the indistinct shape, the biscuits were quickly gobbled up, so I guess that activity was a success.

After lunch, we read again from the Choose-Your-Adventure book My Very Own Robot. (see yesterday's entry). We went through most of the story threads and endings, backtracking again and again to give everybody at least one choice during the reading. We followed the robot to the Planet Silver, where you the reader turn into a robot, too. We sailed on a pirate ship. We got the robot out of a vat of ice cream. We had the robot print money to get us out of jail, and then we went back to see what would happen if we went to jail. The plots were fun and the pictures colorful, but the threads in this easy-reading series may be too brief to do as much choosing and story-following as we'd like.

The boys got a kick out of the robot hijinx, though, and the girls went along. We'll try another one of the easy-reading Dragonlark volumes, The Haunted House, on Thursday. And then, next week, we'll give the older-reader novels a try, and see if they'll hold the kids' attention without being too complex or sophisticated.

After reading, the kids had some free play time, then homework, journals, ice pops and home. Tomorrow, weather allowing, we're going to a park with a zoo and other attractions. It will be good for everyone to get out and run around.

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