Crafty Camping with Aliens, Day 1 and my sweet 2 year old can swear (even in context) Oh no...

Camping with Aa.-girl was amazing! I came prepared with lots of activities in mind (thanks to a wonderful book by the name of "Camp Out" and it paid off huge. When we arrived at the site we scouted around to see what was in the vicinity. A lovely river was spied right away.

It was right after the river sighting that we had the alien sighting! I noticed what looked like many eyes peering up from the ground. On closer inspection it seems to be some kind of dense and hard (Grandma touched it!) fungal growth with weeping dewy droplets. What the heck is that?

After that excitement it was off to collect leaves, stones and twigs to make "insects". A little glue and some found natural materials and we were "bugging" out.

We ended up making 2 each and then we placed them around the campsite. Perhaps some future campers will find our "insects" and become inspired?!

This is the one Aa.-girl spent most of her attention on.

A while later we decided to do the leaf printing activity. I purchased a scrap book, tempera paints, and 3 sponges which I cut in half to make 6 small ones. We also had a bowl of water for cleaning the paintbrush and a rag for cleanup. We went scouting for some beautiful leaves and then the fun began.

I had Aa. "paint" some paint onto a sponge so that it was mostly covered. She then chose a leaf and put it vein side up on the left hand page of her scrapbook. Achieving good coverage of paint on the leaf required some help from Mommy. She then picked up her leaf and turned it over onto the right hand page and pressed with her palms (I helped a bit here too) The result was some halo sillouettes on the left page and the prints on the right.

Beautiful!

Overall it was a wonderful day but we did have a right of passage event so to speak. We were camping with 9 other people; Grandma and Grandpa T and 7 of their friends. Conversations were lively and I noticed a few off color words used but didn't worrry too much about it. After dinner Aa. started shouting a little more frowned upon version of "Darn-it"! I didn't really know what to do. Something in me said that I shouldn't make too big a deal about it or I might be sorry. So I just calmly but firmly told her that she shouldn't say those things, and that they weren't nice to say. She wouldn't stop so I asked her where she heard them, thinkin that it may have been just that day. She informed me that it was Daddy that she heard it from and then I remembered that one day in frustration he lost his temper and had said just that. Whoah... That event was a good 2 weeks previous so we have now been reminded what those sweet little absorbent minds can do; take it in and show it to you later to teach you a lesson to control yourself. I now wonder what gems will pop out of her mouth down the road a few weeks after our camping trip!