Hello Strangers.

Last week I went to bed dreaming of what it will be like if I ever do own a summer camp; specifically some of the projects I want the kids to do, and I again thought about all of the different ways to build forts. I thought of two ideas specifically:

Years ago, I found a project where you make an igloo out of plastic milk jugs. You glue them together side by side, flat bottoms facing out, lids facing in. I thought about how if I were a child, that would be wonderful to build, but the lids might break my immersion. So, then I thought, what if the lids were painted and stenciled with special designs? What if when you twisted off the caps, there were rolled scrolls on the inside of the bottles? 

And then I realized you could put anything on the scrolls; puzzles and ciphers, challenges to help the community or learn, information on old myths, legends, and landmarks… But that’s not all! You could decorate the outside of the structure as well, any way you wanted, but I thought it would be neat to cover the base with soil and grow some flowers, as well as paint the jugs with moss mixture. You could make a mud dome, decorate it with rocks, the possibilities are endless. What a cool clubhouse, right?

The second idea would use cardboard milk cartons as brick molds. I would love to make colorful, translucent bricks, however, I ran into a problem. The only relatively ecofriendly and inexpensive method I found for making translucent bricks was to freeze water (like in the case of a winter fort.) So, what I thought of as an alternative was to use rectangular water bottles that had been painted with a mixture of glue and paint, so they’d be colorful and look reminiscent of stained glass. We’d use those to build a low, three-sided wall, and then the kids would make a roof out of plastic tarp they colored and designed stretched over a frame. I’ll have to research the effects of colored, filtered light, as well as how plastic leaches into the ground…But I think it has potential to be a great summer camp project!

Those are this week’s small dream projects. I only hope that one day they’ll be possible. If not for me though, maybe you and your kids; anything is possible right?

Happy Saturday and Happy Dreaming,

–Mabel