Cousin Camp

Next on the summer schedule came Cousin Camp, three days of girl-time. With nary an awkward silence (can these girlies really take in what anyone else is saying with each of them chattering incessantly?) the grand-girls renewed bonds with one another. Painting, drawing, creating pizzas, playing games of scrabble and croquet, swimming, and trampoline-jumping,  the girls wiled away some summer days.

 

Young-ladies-in-the-making prepared and served a real-for-sure tea party, complete with homemade scones. They sipped from favorite picks out of the tea cupboard most lady-like with pinkies in the air. 

A fun activity, worth repeating with other groups of any age, centered around decorating a paper lunch bag to represent ourselves. We cut images from magazines and glued them on the outside  indicating that we liked chocolate or puppies or mexican food or mountain biking or algebra (pretty sure no one pictured themselves that way). Those pix that we clipped and dropped inside represented the "me that no body sees", like how I am afraid of spiders or don't like to be the center of attention or am longing to be a tight-rope walker in the circus! (One can go as deep as they like with the analogies.) Then we each talked about our bag (ourselves) in a way that was non-threatening but insightful. The process itself generated conversation informing as to where each girl saw herself and /or wanted to be and provided dialogue for encouraging one another. While the intention was that the cut and paste session would be a short interlude between events for the day, the girls lingered for a couple hours and enjoyed learning more about one another as well as themselves.