It's a Jungle out There: Sparks Safari Camp!

The final event of the Sparks year was Safari Camp! We had 14 out of our 16 Sparks attend which was awesome! We had a really great time and it was a great end to the year!

 

 

I love themed camps! The little details that pull a camp together are my favourite things to design and use! This is the chore chart we used. The monkeys were stationary and the bananas with the group names on it moved from monkey to monkey at each meal.

 

 

This is my name tag design, I had fun with the Safari theme!

We started our camp with a flag ceremony on Saturday morning. I have never done this before with Sparks, but they really enjoyed it and it was fun to do something new.

 

 

We also tried to tackle beginner orienteering with the girls which actually turned out better than I expected. The girls were really engaged in the activities and learned a lot too!

 

 

It rained all day on Saturday which was a bit of a bummer, but the Sparks were all prepared with raincoats and boots- I love this picture from our first hike of the day. 

 

 

I got a little "artsy-fartsy" at the chapel while the girls were eating their snack and took this picture of the beautiful rain drops on a tree.

 

 

The Sparks at the Chapel, my second favourite place in the world (after Disneyland!) They look so happy in their rain gear.  

 

 

We were supposed to be doing bug houses that weekend but because of the rain we decided to do rain gauges instead. We put about eight buckets all around the campsite and went out 2 or 3 times throughout the weekend to see how much rain was in the bucket. It was a lot of fun!

 

 

One of the games we played was a survival game of sorts. We pretended to be squirrels and got 6 beans to hide somewhere in the forest to find for winter food. We had to get back to the leader before the winter frost came and we starved. It was a really good game and the Sparks learned a lot about animals in the winter time.

 

 

 

This WAS the trail we were supposed to go on for our hike, but it decided to be a river instead.

 

 

My rubber boots (customized when I was bored one day) were my favourite accessory of the weekend!

 

 

Keeping with the Safari theme we made these adorable card stock and clothespin giraffes. My favourite thing about doing crafts with Sparks is that they are all given the same materials and they all turn out totally different. There were rainbow giraffes and giraffes with tails, and three eyes, they were awesome! Here are a few of my favourites.

 

 

 

We also made autograph books for the girls to sign as a memory of the year. They turned out really well- and it was fun to watch the girls get each other's signatures.

 

 

Story time in the afternoon! Books were a pretty big part of the weekend, which, as a teacher I was totally okay with!

 

 

The fire ban was still on so we had a glow stick campfire and, like I did at Sparks Friendship Camp, the girls got to take a piece of the campfire to bed with them.

 

 

To get the girls excited for camp we made bunk tags at a meeting for the girls to use at camp. This is mine and I love it! I made most of the other leaders' bunk tags as well and I put the sticker that says "Going Bananas" on each of them to represent the weekend. :)

 

 

The next morning the sun was shining (hooray!) and we had another flag ceremony. One of our girls was unable to come to the district advancement so we gave her her Brownie book and pin at the end of camp. It was a very touching moment for me.

 

 

This is another camp hat craft we did- a little fire. It is pretty simple, all you need is some orange ribbon, orange tulle, sticks, and some raffia. I also made a little tag to remember the camp by and it was so cute to see the girls put their first camp hat craft on their hats.

 

 

We had some time to spare so we played with some bubbles and skipping ropes. They had a lot of fun!

 

 I am pretty happy with how the camp turned out and I hope that the girls had fun. We had a great year and I wish them all the best in Sparks or Brownies next year!