Here’s a fun at-home camp activity, if your kids can’t get to real camp this summer! It starts as an art project, and ends with a hunt outside.
To start, we gathered lots of tiny rocks, and then used shiny metallic paints to turn them into gems. Because Travis doesn’t love to get his fingers messy, the painting did end up being mostly a mommy step. But he loved the shiny blues and greens and purples we had as a result.
While he was distracted, I hid clusters of the “gems” around the yard.
Little sister Veronika was my accomplice to hide them! Then it was time for a treasure hunt.
Veronika is of course too young to get in on the hunt in a truly competitive way, but if you’re playing this game with more than one big kid, you can assign point values for different colors, and make it a true competition.
Travis, meanwhile, enjoyed the hunt and the satisfaction of finding all the sparkling “gems” and bringing his treasure home.
These were so pretty we decided to leave one out as a lucky find for a neighbor!