Fairies of the Forest

 The Dopps Cottage camps have continued.  Last week, Golda taught one on her birthday and continuing all week, and Ruby did a night camp called Fairies of the Forest.  This week we're winding down, with 2 weeklong camps called "New Orleans Rhythm Works" and "Art and Music."  Ruby is getting ready for them right now.

People have asked me if I would mind if their kids "copied" our idea and did camps.  Of course not!  First of all it's not "our" idea, and secondly, it's a great idea!  The more camps the better.  It's such a great deal for parents at these prices, and it's good for teens and pre-teens who don't have/want a regular job.  So go for it!  Here are somethings we've learned:

It's pretty good money, but it's not "a huge money maker," as some parents have put it in asking our girls about it.  If you're paying five bucks for your kid to spend three hours at our house, you have to imagine that you're not being ripped off.  So no, the girls aren't rolling in the dough.  But they make probably $15 an hour, which is great money!  That said, it's not a lot of hours because we have a limited pool of customers, so the girls can't run camps all day, every day.  And they have to be super frugal about purchasing supplies, because that can totally eat up profits.  So far, they have paid for Girls' Camp with some of the money and saved the rest for a possible trip sometime in the future.

As far as the content of the camps, I laugh when people accuse me of creativity, because all we do is 1. Think of a title that sounds intriguing.  2.  Search that title on Pinterest.  It's really easy, and that method is good for getting the creative juices flowing and getting excited about the project.  Generally in life, I always start with a theme and go from there.

I have found that most of the kids just want to be given glitter glue, scissors and paper and be given free reign.  With a wide range of ages at the camp, explicit instructions don't work.  If it's something that has multiple steps, we'll do one step and then leave that project, do something else, then come back and do the next step.  While I would like all the kids to leave with an amazing project in hand, it's usually not like that.  We don't have the budget, or the "customer" pool to divide camps up into different age groups.  So we give kids supplies, ideas, and let them go wild.  The kids are happy that way.  These fairy houses were a huge hit, and required no preparation, no instructions beyond a little description of what a fairy would be looking for in a home.  As they worked, Ruby and I told them that we would be handing out supplies to the "best" teams, kindof like Hunger Games, where needed supplies fall from the sky.  (We didn't reference Hunger Games, however!)  As the kids worked on their teams, we dug around in art bins for random leftoevers, like a feather, a lid, a box, a sticker, etc.

"Who wants a...a...fairy chair?"  Take a lost glue stick lid and call it a fairy chair and kids will clamor for it!

 Scott was the judge of the houses, and gave each kid a different award, along with a little cardboard fairy to live in the house.  The kids loved the element of competition, and it was fun to see them work together.  I swear, they could have kept working for another couple of hours!

But...we didn't have that kind of time.  It's always on to the next adventure, this time, practicing in the car at Cherry Hill while mom tries to round up all the kids to make it to guitar lessons on time.  Can't be late!  Fairies never are. ;)