Summer Camp

At the beginning of every summer break I roll out our theme for the next three months. Remember our Hogwarts summer? That was 2017. I've done something similar every summer since, but for some reason I've never put them on the blog.

Let's fix that.

A few months before our 2018 summer break started, the kids began asking what we were going to do for the summer. I hadn't originally intended it to be an ongoing thing. It hadn't occurred to me that the kids would enjoy our Hogwarts summer so much that it would now need to be a summer tradition. 

Traditions generally take a lot of work from the mom, which made me kind of anxious since I was about a month away from Topher joining our family, so I knew I wouldn't be able to do much once he was born. I started brain-storming about what our theme could be. Taking another cue from the kids' reading obsession at the time, I quickly found a solution: we would go to Camp Half-Blood.

For the uninitiated, Camp Half-Blood features prominently in the Percy Jackson series, the Heroes of Olympus series, and the Apollo series, all about the children of the Greek and Roman deities and all written by Rick Riordan. Peter and I had already read them, but Cooper and Phoebe started reading them in 2018. With that as my inspiration, I jumped in.

I spent time looking up the attributes of each deity and what disciplines they were responsible for on Earth.

I created new chore charts.

I ordered Camp Half-Blood t-shirts (which play a big role in the books) from Amazon.

I made folders for each child with a page devoted to each Greek god. The aim was to have the kids choose activities and read books to go along with the various disciplines watched over by each god, then write them down on the corresponding page. This is also where they kept their summer reading program checklist.

I printed this out to hang over our chore charts in the laundry room as a nod to the previous summer.

And I printed this to hang over the timeout spot. I thought it was funny.

Then, when school ended for the year, I told the kids our plan by giving them their shirts.

Just like they'd been sorted into houses for Hogwarts the summer before, this year we took online quizzes to find out which cabin everyone belonged in. Peter and Cooper stuck together in Poseidon's cabin. Sophie was in Artemis' cabin (which is always empty in the books) and Phoebe was in Athena's. I printed out a poster for each of their cabins and stuck them to their doors.

They were all excited about the theme. Unfortunately, due to the sleep-deprived nature of having a newborn, I didn't take a ton of pictures, and most of the activities were self directed. But I did come up with a few fun things and was able to connect them to a Greek god.

We cooked fun food all summer long. (Dionysus and Demeter)

We made weapons and created structures. (Ares, Hephaestus, and Athena)

We fashioned clever clutches. (Athena and Aphrodite)

We had adventures. (Hermes)

We spent a little time near water. (Poseidon)

And Cooper spent some time in the air. (Zeus)

We learned about science and architecture. (Apollo and Athena)

And we visited the library, often. (Athena)

A good time was had by all. Phoebe was so inspired by our theme that she decided to carry it through to Halloween. She was Annabeth Chase that year, one of the main characters of the series.