Grandma Camp, Part 1
If you’re in a position (physically, mentally, economically, geographically) to fill in for a week or a few days of grandchild care over summer vacation or winter break, you can make the time special for you and the grandkids by designating the time as “Grandma Camp.” Over a few posts, I’ll hand on some ideas for scheduling, food, and projects for Grandma (or Grandpa) Camp—the overall idea is to bring the dynamic of a camp experience into your time together, so that you and the kids can especially look forward to it.
Truth be told, Grandma Camp isn’t all that different than caring for the grandchildren otherwise. But the camp dynamic does include unique elements:
• The name
• Traditions
• A schedule
• Planned activities or projects
What’s in a name?
Having a name is important! The name focuses attention—parents can use it to refer to the upcoming time, kids can get excited about it, you can ramp up your planning for it. And the name reinforces the idea that the time will be fun! Perhaps your camp’s name can be one that suits your grandkids’ pet names for you: “GrandmaGrampy Camp” would have been a good name for ours.
Traditions
Summer camps typically have traditions, weather songs, Friday s’mores, campfires, or clean-cabin kudos. The traditions bond you as campers, and provide stability that helps anchor you even if you are far from home. Grandma Camps can also have traditions, and they needn’t be anything elaborate. At our Grandma Camp, Grampy greets the kids at the door or car with a “GRRRR” instead of a “hello,” pretending to be a monster. (A short chase usually ensues.) Food traditions, too: For example, all the kids like yogurt. A snack of home-made yogurt (super easy! Ask me how), blueberries, and maple syrup is a tradition for us. (That and getting Grampy to pour the maple syrup, so they get “too much.”)
(Flexible) schedule
Having a schedule of sorts really helps—you don’t want to get caught at 1:30 with nothing planned if the kids will be there until 5:00! It’s also part of helping the kids and you have security and a pattern to the days.
A typical day of Grandma Camp for preschool/early grade school kids looks like this:
8:30 Arrival, free play
9:30 Snack
10:00 Planned project or activity (possibly outside)
11:30 Lunch
12:00 Outside!
2:00 Break for all, such as screen time
2:30 Snack
3:00 Planned project or activity (possibly outside)
4:00 Cool-down activity (eg, reading, drawing)
5:00 Go home
Another type of typical day replaces the 10-3 block with a field trip to a museum, nature center, or other longer outing. (Note that the snacks and lunch are still included!) Younger kids, of course, will need a nap. Older ones might want more time on their own.
Planned activities
I’ll suggest specific activities in a future post (and you can get ideas from other Tips and Fun posts on the blog). The general tip I have for Grandma Camp is that planning activities works best as a joint project. Before the camp—and sometimes, if things aren’t going well, throughout the camp—the kids and I sit down and make lists of what they want to do. Having an activity on a list they came up with reminds them that they had a great idea, and yes! they do want to gather flowers, play with cars, paint, ride bikes…whatever it was they added. The planning also helps you carve out time if different grandkids want to do different things. For example, our older grandson likes to do New York Times puzzles together. To make time to do this with him, I have to have the younger ones involved in free play, or doing something with Grandpa. Planning helps apportion time for everyone!