Kamp Keck, 2012

Memories


Five pounds of freshly purchased hot dogs stands out in my mind when I think back to when I was a teenager and spent several weeks on my grandparents’ farm in East Tennessee with cousins. It was the early 1960s. My grandparents loved their grandchildren in sacrificial ways. They had little to share but opened up their small house to those who came. The girls slept in the spare bedroom and the boys in the living room. There was no air conditioning, except for what came through the screen doors and windows. They didn’t even have a vinyl swimming pool. Food and snacks weren’t extravagant. But they did want to please us. Hot dogs were the avenue to achieving it to my grandmother. She usually didn’t buy them. Entertainment consisted of nightly trips to revival services at a little country church, playing “Old Maid” with my grandmother, picking green beans as if we were contestants, salvaging tobacco after a hail-storm, “slopping” the hogs first thing in the morning, coon hunts in the dark, stalking crows and trips to town where we spent any earned money buying chocolate milkshakes at a little diner. Memories like this are precious and holdup for years. Memories, loyalties and love are the glue that hold a family together.


Back to the hot dogs, my grandmother was surprised we didn’t eat all of the hot dogs in one meal. It took a huge pot. Finding one big enough was a dilemma in itself. Maybe that is why it was all sort of fun. Grandparents can certainly open the eyes of a kid.


Purpose

Time travel forward 50-plus years. Circumstances have changed somewhat. I am now a grandparent, Saundria, my wife, and I have decided to host “Camp” for our grandchildren. Our children’s families live 300 or so miles apart. The children don’t get to spend concentrated time together so a cousin’s camp just makes sense. In fact, we can’t think of a better way to strengthen the relationships they have to one another and to us? I can’t begin to tell you how excited we were about what we had planned.

Because times have changed, this week was different than when I grew up. Then, little was planned. Activities emerged naturally, on a day-to-day basis. You know, you can’t predict a hailstorm.


Now, everything is planned. Then, I was a young teenager. Today, the campers are young school-age and pre-school age children. No comparison. Back then, electronics consisted of an electrical light switch and maybe a television. Today, we are competing with DVDs, electronic tablets and cell phones.


People have asked, “What did you do everyday for a week?” And “How did you pull off a week with four little children?” Understanding that we are in our sixties and not thirties and we had our hands full with only two children then. This blog posting provides an overview of the week, complete with photos. In the last section of this posting I will make some practical grandfather suggestions (I am not a professional child-development specialist, though I have learned some things because I know one or two) as to how to plan a kid’s camp.


Day-By-Day Activities As Originally Planned

I will begin with our “plan” and comment on what actually happened from time to time to let you know “things happen” and that you have to be flexible because of changing circumstances, like rain, heat, facility conditions, health, etc.


Here is what was planned and what actually happened:


Monday

· Ask children to share a memory from last year’s camp

· Read/Tell the “In The Beginning” (The Creation Story in “Remember, and Don’t Forget: Bible Stories for Mom and Me”)

· Art/Craft: Children work on a Sea Mural-Collage (with fish, jelly-fish, sponges, star fish, whales, dolphins, octopuses, and other sea life)

· Water Play (Possibilities: Vinyl Play Pool, Slip and Slide, water guns and/or balloons)

· Lunch (either at house or Chuck E. Cheese)

· Chuck E Cheese (riding horses, helicopters and fighters planes, Skee-Ball, and other skill games). We do this just for fun on a hot day.

· We then have dinner at Leeanne’s (our daughter), where she prepared a meatloaf. Prior to the meal being ready, the kids ride every “riding toy” imaginable (bicycles, big-wheel tri-cycles, kick scooters, wagons, etc.)


It was interesting to hear from our grandchildren what they remembered from last year. One of the children remembered the police whistle I used to summon them on occasion.)


Water play this day was confined to the vinyl play pool. We wanted to save some options for another day.

We ate lunch at our house before going to Chuck E Cheese.


Since two of our grandchildren live nearby, many riding toys were available for all of the grandchildren to use.

Tuesday

· Read/Tell the “Two by Two” (The Story of Noah in “Remember, and Don’t Forget: Bible Stories for Mom and Me”). Bible story charades.

· Go to The Treehouses at Cheekwood (a Botanical Gardens in Nashville). This special exhibit featured 7 books. Treehouses included “The Jolly Roger” (Peter and Wendy), “The Conch House” (Lord of the Flies), “The Rainbow Fish” (The Rainbow Fish), “Walden Treehouse” (Walden), “The Giver” (The Giver), “Ocean of Notions” (Haroun and the Sea of Stories) and “Up and Down Again” (The Hobbit).

· Paint Rainbow Rocks and Make Collages with paint chips (from paint store).

· Water play

· Work with clay

Many of the treehouses at Cheekwood involved water in some way. The Rainbow Fish especially tied in with the story of Noah. After lunch the children painted “rainbow” rocks (obtained from a local landscaping firm prior to camp and washed) with tempra paints. We told their parents the rocks would look good in a flower bed or alone their front walk. The Up and Down Again Treehouse may have been 3 of our grandchildren’s favorite structures because they enjoyed the long slide. One liked the Jolly Roger because he is into boats.

The most interesting project made from clay was the hot dog in a bun one of my grandsons made. Another child made a volcano and later painted the top of the cone red.


Wednesday

· Read/Tell “A Little Girl Helps an Important Man” (The Story of Naaman, a man with a terrible skin disease in “Remember, and Don’t Forget: Bible Stories for Mom and Me”)

· Slip & Slide in the backyard

· Mud pies and dirt play

· Nashville Adventure Science Center

· Face and arm painting (each one had a skin-wound painted on their arm also, reminding them of Naaman’s diseased skin)

Getting wet and playing in a small pile of dirt just seemed right for our grandchildren. After making mud cakes and pies one of our granddaughters simply lathered-up in mud so to speak. By comparison Naaman would have looked well before he was healed by God.

Thursday

· Read/Tell Story “Breakfast on the Beach” (The Story of Jesus and his disciples eating breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee after a night of fishing in “Remember, and Don’t Forget: Bible Stories for Mom and Me”)

· Breakfast on the Shore

· Park shore on Percy Priest Lake

· Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen for lunch

· Paint stumps with tempra paints.

Although we were in the middle of a drought, it was a cooler, rainy day. Breakfast on the lakeshore was in our plan. Instead, after breakfast at the house, we traveled to the park, observed the boats and imagined a campfire on the shore and had a snack. After an enjoyable time throwing stones into the water, we drove back to Franklin and ate seafood at Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen. One of our grandchildren loves going to this restaurant. It wasn’t exactly fish cooked on a campfire, but it did include fish.


After returning home, the guys painted some log-sections (I had cut a tree down a year or so ago and had 4 or 5 sectioned logs) with tempra paint. They enjoyed pounding nails into the logs afterward. It looked like so much fun the girls joined in later. While the guys were doing “guy” things, the girls were inside working on the sea mural. Although it was a rain-day, it did not rain continuously, allowing the kids to work/play outside in the afternoon.

Friday

· Read/Tell “When Jesus Said ‘Shhh’” (The Story of Jesus Quieting the Sea” (from “Remember, and Don’t Forget: Bible Stories for Mom and Me”)

· Chick-fil-A (dress up like a cow) and enjoy a free lunch for Cow Appreciation Day

· Monkey Joe’s (an indoor play center featuring inflatable jump, slide and bounce structures)

· Water Balloons, Toy Fish frozen in ice-blocks, Squirt guns, Swimming Pool and Creative Truck Play.

· Camp Awards (trophies and attribute rocks)


After reading our story, we spend a fair amount of time creating cow costumes for our lunch outing. It was free lunch day at Chick-fil-A for those wearing a cow costume. Grandparents had help from the grandchildren in making their costumes.

After lunch, we went to Monkey Joe’s. It wasn’t the best of days there inasmuch as the children’s play center had two busloads of older children and they were a bit intimidating. If we ever do that sort of thing again, if we see two buses in the parking lot we will substitute some other activity for it. It is wise to have alternative activities as back-ups. We left early from Monkey Joe’s and actually do something they enjoy immensely more, squirt-guns, thawing toy fish frozen in large blocks of ice and playing creatively in the back of Poppa’s truck.


I especially enjoyed watching their imaginative play in the bed of the truck. They played with noodles and rope and hauled “fish” from out of their boat into the boat with the use of the rope. Shoes and booster seats were favorite “fish.”

 

After dinner that evening, Mimi presented trophies to each camp participant. The youngest child was so proud of his accomplishment. He had a trophy! We also presented each grandchild with a smaller, attribute rock. Each rock had the name of a grandchild, an attribute we would like to see develop in their lives and a Bible verse characterizing that attribute. The notion is that we need to we encourage each one to focus on a characteristic and observe it in their lives.

Saturday

Travel Day – Meet the mother of two of our grandchildren in Louisville, Kentucky (half-way from our house and their home).


Camp was over and Saturday was spent taking two of our four children to meet a parent. For us it meant driving to Louisville, Kentucky. We stopped frequently for potty breaks, drinks and planned to meet their mother for lunch. Unfortunately rain and a traffic accident prevented their mother from meeting us at the designated hour and so we played checkers and bought ice cream and drove around a bit until she was able to arrive.


Notes:

Prerequisites (understand ages of children, age-appropriate activities, simple & fun, be flexible to weather and other changing conditions. Move activities to another day if necessary. Plan additional art projects and games (indoor and outdoor) to use if necessary. Be ready to think on your feet, if something doesn’t seem to be working. And don’t be surprised if something planned energizes into something big, bold and wonderful or fizzles because of some lack of interest. Last year art was given a lot of attention by campers; this year it wasn’t a very big deal. At the end of the week the wall of art in our house was half of what last year’s gallery contained.


“Remember and Don’t Forget: Bible Stories for Mom and Me” is age and developmentally appropriate for children ages 3 to 8. It paraphrases scripture relating a Biblical truth that children can understand. Stories are not above the heads of children. The way I think of it is: We don’t expect children to do calculus, repair refrigerators, or compete in the Olympics. Children are concrete thinkers. The stories in this book help young children understand that God loves them. Isn’t that why Christ came? It’s foundational to our faith.


The book “Raising Boys and Girls, The Art of Understanding Their Differences” by Sissy Goff, David Thomas and Melissa Trevathan is another resource you may want to utilize. Boys and girls are different in the way they view and act on things during the various stages of development. Saundria and I try to take those differences into account when we read or tell stories and plan activities that complement those stories.


The week you plan needs to take into account the number, gender and ages of your grandchildren. Older children can help younger children. Sleeping arrangements, schedules and menus need to recognize allergies, likes and dislikes, preparation requirements and finances. You may or may not have access to a vehicle or vehicles to transport all of your grandchildren. In our case, our daughter lives nearby and assisted us with two meals. Our youngest camper also went home with her each night because he hadn’t spent that many nights away from home and needed just a little more rest than the others. She was also a part of some activities as her schedule allowed. One day an older neighborhood girl joined our camp and helped manage activities.


Back in my day, “Camp” wasn’t even called camp. And it wasn’t perfect, but it did happen. My memories, loyalties and love for my cousins remain.

Scripture:

Deuteronomy 6.7 – As you go, teach your children that God is good.

Deuteronomy 6. 20 – When your son or daughter asks you, you can say what the Lord has done for you.

Psalm 78.4 – Tell the next generation what God has done, His power and wonders.

Psalm 79.13 – God’s people will praise Him and from generation to generation they will recount it.

Psalm 145.4 – One generation will commend God’s works to another.

Ecclesiastes 11.9 – Enjoy your youth within God’s boundaries.