What a fun party ("hoe down") we had today for the close of our second session of camp. The addition of the fiddle music I had on CD was great! The ice cream was delicious! This time we also made a tin can toy which was a big hit. Here is a video of the kids playing with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gJlnIlcfpE

And here is a video of us dancing to the fiddle music on the blacktop play area: (pardon my singing in the background!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4PedqaDKU0

On Thursday we went down to the pond and had a lot of fun with our stick fishing poles and dip nets. Here is our favorite find of the day:

I had such a great time last week at the first summer camp of the season! The group was really fun, and thanks so much to Sahra and Savannah for their devotion and work to make the camp a success! I have posted the best photos from last week on our facebook page, and I will post a few here:

There were just so many good pictures it's hard to choose! This year we had a bigger basket of clothes for hand washing, including some baby clothes ("Where's the baby?" they asked me.) We also made homemade ice cream on Friday with the parents, and of course, it started raining! Oh well, it is Oregon!

Thanks to Log House Plants in Cottage Grove for donating numerous plants for our butterfly garden- including about 15 milkweed plants! Hooray! Hopefully the families in the Butterfly Garden Club can plant these soon! Contact Sahra for more info!

Karen

We had a lot of fun at the Butterfly playshop in May, although because of the wet, muddy weather we opted not to go down to the garden and work on it. We learned all about butterfly life cycles, and about some adaptations of butterflies:

mimicry
disguise
toxicity
camoflage

And we also got to make our own sparkly, glittery butterflies to take home! The kids really liked looking at the laminated butterfly and dragonfly wings under the microscope. One of the things we talked about was the kinds of plants that local butterflies need to survive, and how important it is to preserve the habitat for them.

All the families who attended signed up to be in the Butterfly Garden Club this summer and come out and tend the butterfly garden. This weekend is the orientation for that. Email me for more info.