Saturday, March 10, 2012

play camping

the great thing about pinterest is that sometimes all you need is a kick in the imagination to get you thinking. this week, a pin i saw was going camping in your backyard. "hey yeah! great idea!" i think when i see these things that i should have come up with on my own. and the next day when ben said, "i have nothing to play," (words that should never be coming out of a 2.75 yr old's mouth in the first place) i got our little play tent out and we went to work setting up camping in our living room.
i asked ben what he thought we needed to take with us camping and he set out on a mad scramble through house collecting every single thing he saw. to get some inspiration, we checked out a couple of our camping books:

Curious George Goes Camping (Curious George 8x8)

and my personal favourite, Just Me and My Dad
Just Me and My Dad (Little Critter) (Look-Look)
after reading these two books, i threw some of the junk out of the tent that we didn't "need" and focused on the things we saw in the book: a fishing rod, a frying pan for cooking dinner, gathering firewood (in our case, train tracks) etc.

neither book mentioned bringing your guitar for singing around the camp fire but ben took my word for it.
my sleeping bag was a big hit.

fishing on the lake.

lunch in a tent is always tastier.

since ben's current version of playing pretend so far only includes fighting fires and being a doctor, it was fun to introduce a whole pretend environment that lent itself to an entire day of play. camping out in the backyard is just around the corner.

5 comments:

Alyssa said...

You are the most fun mom ever! Love the fire pit and the lake! I can tell your kids are going to be great campers:)

ashlee said...

bec that is so fun!!! mom of the year for sure :)

Heather said...

We always had a great time with you playing by the creek and in the house. So fun!
Looks like Ben and Avery are going to enjoy your imagination as well. That's a great setup!
-I should say though that it's not safe to store cookware and food in a tent. hehe.

LaelDyck said...

Wow!!! Way to be creative! I especially love the lake :)

theRachel said...

I agree with all the previous comments - you are SO creative. I hope this post has gotten pinned to Pinterest, and I'm sure that other mamas and papas out there will be re-pinning it and trying it out with their littles!