Thursday, September 2, 2010

Ultimate sports arena is always a good time!

This thing brings a lot of fun to camp....especially after hours with the counselors when they joust, play soccer, and volleyball! So worth the money to rent. We got this from rent-fun.com

I am looking for something that kids can sew....

Hey there!

If anyone can help me out, I am looking for a great company or project to plan for next year's camp to do. This is my need....It has to be something that I can have several kids do at one time, as well as it has to be done in about one hour of working time. 

Please feel free to send me some links to check it out. Or, if you have a great idea yourself, I will gladly post it and of course send people YOUR way. 

Take care,

~Nyky

Thursday, August 26, 2010

This year was a great success! But it could get better with YOUR help!

This year was by far the most successful from my perspective as activities director for my camp. I had a wonderful staff that worked their tails off to make sure that things got done in time. I planned things out a little differently than I had in the past.  Pillow making had been a staple activity for our group for the last several years, but this would require hours and hours of man time to cut the fabric out. This year, I opted to leave that activity out, and we were able to focus more on the other things planned for the week. Our life sized game board was a big hit. It was pretty enough, but we had a strong leader with a lot of pizazz who ran the activity for most of the week. My thought was just to give candy or prizes out at every "special" spot, but instead, she gave candy out to everyone in dribs and drabs AND she used the "special" spots to make the kids sing silly songs or do a silly dare. It kept the groups going for the whole hour that we had to entertain them for. I would totally say that it was worth the time, effort and money if you will use it more than once.

It would be REALLY great if I could figure out a way to build on this board for next year, and make it even better. I plan on sharing many of the things that I have done in the past on this blog, and can't wait until people start sharing their ideas and bounce ideas off of each other to make our groups, clubs, camps, etc better than ever before!

Happy Crafting!
~Nyky

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Welcome to my blog!

Hello there!  For the last 6 years I have been the activities director for a camp for kids with skin disorders. It has changed my life in so many ways. I am so blessed to be able to plan and execute many of the activities that happen for our week-long overnight camp. I have also participated in many different kids events and programs. Often helping with the activities and craft portions of the programs. It has been especially trying at times to find new and creative ways to do 'traditional' camp/club things, as well as to find ideas for crafts and activities that I could do for the group of about 180-200 people that we plan for. So.....welcome to OUR place to try out new ideas for crafts, hopefully review new products, and share information about what works and what doesn't for your organization.

My target audience would be anyone who plans activities for any club, organization, church, camp, etc. that is looking to find and/or share ideas with other organizers.

Right now, I am finishing up a life sized game board that I found at www.recreationguy.com. I will be posting pictures later today. We are using it as one of our rotation activities that we do. We split the kids up into 9 different groups, and rotate them from 9am-noon for hour-long activities. We split it up over three days, so that we are not giving them too much structured time throughout the day. I am really looking forward to playing this life sized game with everyone. I would love to find out what other LARGE games there are out there. I did find a life sized Connect Four game on a website once...and then could never find it again.

Hopefully, we can use this as a resource for everyone planning for groups either big or small to gain knowledge and SAVE TIME while being as creative as possible.

Happy Crafting
~Nyky