Every summer our church hosts a camp for young women (ages 12-18), where we get them away from boys and cell phones (at least we try), and daily showers, and help them to learn about themselves and strengthen relationships with each other and with God.
I haven’t been to girls camp for several years. The last time I went I was in charge of crafts for the entire camp and blogged about those all here (girls camp crafts). I sort of volunteered this year to go as a Cabin Mom, because my 12-year-old was going for the first time, and I just wanted to be part of the experience with her. I was not her Cabin Mom (she was in a neighboring cabin), but I was “Mom” to twelve 12-year-old girls for 3 days–trying not to lose track of anyone and working to make them feel safe and loved.
Our theme for camp this year was “Together we can make it!” This made me think of the scripture that talks about being “Knit Together in Love.” So I made that the theme for our cabin, and found lots of ways to tie in the knitting theme–more than we had time to do. I made the yarn art before going to camp and chronicled its progress on Instagram. I had read to use wire reinforced clothesline to shape your words, but the only kind I could find was coated in a thick green plastic that was stronger than the wire in holding it’s shape. So that didn’t work. I ended up resorting to pipe cleaners, which worked pretty well–especially for things like crossing the “t”. It was a bit flimsy however, and needed fishing line in several places to support it, when we put it on the front of our cabin. You just tightly wrap each letter until the pipecleaner is no longer visible. I changed the colors often, so that this would be a fun age-appropriate and modern display.
One of the first things we did together as a cabin was make yarn hearts (Inspired by these). I had my husband shape the wire before camp, so the girls only had to do the wrapping. It proved to be a little more difficult than I had anticipated as the yarn kept slipping along the wire, but we found if we wrapped it around a few times, it would hold it’s place better. In theory, there was supposed to be one heart representing each girl around our theme, but of course some never finished theirs.
We strung colorful yarn across the porch of our cabin like you would crepe paper. It looked much cooler in person. And you see that basket of balls of yarn. I made a ton of little balls of yarn out of styrofoam balls from the dollar store wrapped in colorful yarn. The plan had been to string them together with fishing line and make a garland of yarn balls, but I never got a big enough needle, and really didn’t have as much cabin time as I had planned for. It would have been cool, though!
I left this little treat on the girls pillows while they were out one day. And chose the wording to tie into our theme. “I’m so glad we’re STUCK TOGETHER this year at camp! Being your Cabin Mom is EXTRA fun! I left room in the middle to wrap the gum with yarn and tie a knot, to reinforce our theme.
The other element that we were never able to finish is that I planned for each girl to finger knit a simple necklace in the color of their choice and we would all wear them around camp together as a symbol of our unity. There didn’t end up being a lot of time for finger-knitting lessons. And I barely learned how to do it myself before coming to camp, so I was a little unsure about a few things. But once you get the basics it is really simple (and cheap!). Look on YouTube for tutorials.
So despite not getting to see my vision completed, I really think my efforts paid off. The girls took to calling me “Mom” almost right away, and I ended up sending them all home with their own little balls of yarn to try out their finger knitting.
For more ideas about how to execute this theme, check out my Pinterest board!
And because I never seem to be content with just a little bit of insanity, I was also heavily involved in the Friday night program that was the main spiritual event of the camp. We did a play about the parable of the 10 virgins. If you are interested, let me know and I can share what we did to make it more interactive and personal for the girls (after I round up a few more photos).
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