"Enjoy the little things.....

...for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things"


When I mentioned that I was starting my own camp, I have to be honest, I didn't think it would have had such an impact on me! First let me back up...when I initially decided to do the camp for my girls and only girls in our neighborhood, I decided on the name to be Camp Bella....bella being ONE of the ways you can say "friend" in Italian. Well, after the 100th person telling me that technically, "Amica" is the true word for friend in Italian, I changed the name. The new name and logo is below!




Leading up to my first week I was a little nervous and the only thing I was most nervous about was the fear of everyone having a bad time and I would have 16 eyeballs looking at me with a dumbfounded look! But after day one, I knew that was not the case! I was wiped out! Wow....we not only had fun, but packed a whole lot into one day! Our theme for the week was, "Go Green". Every day had a similar layout, where we started the day with a "morning chat" where we learned more about our friends, talked about the day, and explored our theme in greater detail. Then we broke out into two groups to work on the different tasks at hand. While one group was getting started on the "craft of the day" the other group were pondering the "question of the day" in their journals. Both groups were also enjoying a healthy snack to keep them going as their imaginations were in overdrive!

Of course they had free time every day....as we both needed this time to run around and scream! However, my screaming was done on the inside, but it was screams of happiness, as I was having so much fun ( I know I am crazy...right!). But honestly, I was enjoying every minute with all 8 of these girls! My down time, was my prep time to get us ready for the next transition....lunch time!

Yes, that is right...they MADE their own lunch and dessert every day!!!! And do you know, this was one of the main highlights from my amicas!!! The girls made kebabs, dirt/sand cups, pizzas, ice cream sandwiches, peanut butter/soynut butter swirl sandwiches and ice cream sundaes! I had a kitchen full of mini Julia Childs'!!!

Timing is key when you are trying to plan out 3 1/2 hours of time for 8 girls. I thought that I had it pegged down to the minute on how fast things would get done, and just when I thought, "I did it", they were done! And I still had 20 minutes planned for this activity in my schedule! Now what....well....let me introduce you to one of the BEST ideas ever....Story Cubes! There are 9 dice in a little box and every side of each die has a picture on them. Well, you can play with one person or up to nine. All the amicas sat in a circle and I handed each of them a die. Then I gave them a topic and said that they had to create a story together. Each person rolled their die and then had to think of a sentence that had that picture in it AND it had to go along with the topic and make sense. The girls LOVED letting their imaginiations roll! And when they were finished, they would read it out loud to me and it was exciting to see how excited they were in creating something together.

As I mentioned every amica had a journal for the week. They had a "question of the day" that they had to answer on our topic for the week. Also in their journals they each signed each others book on the first day, I typed up the "story of the day" that they created with the story cubes, facts on our theme, fun facts about their amicas and then all the recipes we shared!

After the three days were over, my house sounded so quiet! I made a collage of pictures for each girl to remember our fun week and then took a walk around the neighborhood to deliver them one day. They loved them!

Going into Camp Amica I was nervous and ending the week I was overwhelmed by the responses! All my amicas couldn't wait for the next session! For me my goal was achieved; I wanted Katie to have a fun summer doing typical things with her typical peers from school. We achieved all three and more! I loved how they involved Anna Cate into everything, but more importantly I loved seeing her surrounded by friends and being one of them.


Camp Amica Session Two here we come!


(Camp Session one was held in July and a month later Session Two was held)