With five kids, I spend a lot of time figuring out what camps everyone will participate in each summer. I generally keep this organized with a “Camp spreadsheet” — featuring a column for each child and the weeks of summer down the left-hand side.
Anyway, I always enjoy perusing the brochures and seeing what different themed weeks each camp is offering. You could study ceramics for a week at an art camp, or make-up for movies and stage. A nature camp might have a creepy crawly insect week, or a water week. One of my kids is doing — I kid you not — a YouTube camp where they learn about content creation.
While to some degree all camps are going to have some similar activities (lunch, games, etc.), giving the week a focus tends to make it more interesting and fun.
Life should be like summer camp
A lot of Vanderhacks this week are going to look at how life should be like summer camp. There’s no reason kids should have all the fun! Giving your weeks a theme can likewise make life more interesting and give direction to leisure hours that wouldn’t be there otherwise.
So, for instance, if the weather looks to be sweltering, you might declare this Water Fun week — and figure out options for each day. That might mean turning on the sprinkler some night after camp/work, visiting a community pool on another night, and going for a walk in a nearby creek some day after dinner. Over the weekend you might go to a water park.
Or if it’s stormy, perhaps this is Mystery week. You grab a bunch of mystery novels from the library, watch Knives Out some night, and play Clue during a weekend afternoon rain shower.
If you’ve got a bit more daytime availability, maybe you could celebrate State Parks Week. Or maybe it’s Baking Week — complete with trying new recipes, visiting a bakery, and watching (and maybe hosting your own version of) The Great British Baking Show.
Effortful fun
To really make something a theme, it helps to hit a topic from multiple angles. During state park week, for instance, you’d obviously visit a few state parks. But you might also read books about their history, or watch any movies or TV shows set with them as backdrops. You could try a new activity at each park — canoeing at one, and bird-watching at another.
Yes, this all takes effort, but that’s part of the appeal of camp. It is serious fun. It is planned and thought through. It’s not the effortless fun of scrolling through social media — and therein lies the magic.
To keep this feeling magical — rather than making the adult in charge feel resentful — keep the focus on something you’d like to do. My guess is that others will come along for the ride. Or you can just participate in this camp all by yourself! Either way, it’s a sure-fire way to make summer a lot more memorable.
As always, I love that you angle your ideas toward working parents (all of the activities can be done on nights or weekends). While those parents that have more daytime hours with their kids can easily adapt things, it’s a rare perspective that you provide. I just wanted to say that this working mom feels very seen by this post. OK, coffee break over and back to work! ❤️
I love this so much! As my three kids are now all teenagers, it has gotten much harder to find ways to spark their collective joy. This idea provides just the right level of intention-setting to get the whole family up and out together. (Though I would never dream of telling my crew of questioners and rebels that there was theme to our weeks! To my mind, this is about quiet orchestration.) The theme possibilities popping into my head already are so fun to think about. Thank you!