I Took Nine Teenagers Camping, and We Had a Fabulous Time

 

I know that I say that every age with my kids and my Girl Scouts is my favorite, but these teenaged years really are my favorite!

Well, at least with my Girl Scouts. My own actual teenagers definitely have their moments...

Teenaged Girl Scouts, though? They are amazing. They're old enough to be independent, but young enough to play. They're old enough to follow directions, but young enough to still be enthusiastic about the arts and crafts projects that call for them. They're old enough to learn new advanced skills, but young enough to bravely try them out without self-consciousness. They're old enough to get along even with kids who aren't their besties, but young enough to still enjoy making up games and playing together. They're old enough to handle free time, but young enough to still enjoy spending that free time messing around down at the creek.

Troop Leader Brag Time: I recently had the PERFECT camping trip with nine of my teenaged Girl Scouts and two co-leaders. Everybody got along. Everybody was enthusiastic about all of our planned activities, and nobody complained of boredom during our downtime. All the adults took turns planning and running various activities, so nobody had too much work and everybody had plenty of breaks. All of our projects worked pretty much as planned. It didn't rain. Everybody ate, and everybody liked the food. The kids, both experienced and novice campers, all learned something new, and they all earned two badges and a fun patch. Nobody got injured bigger than a first-aid kit could handle. 

It was absolutely magical. 

Earning badges while camping is actually a bit of a challenge when you've got a larger troop of older Girl Scouts. All the camping-specific badges for older Scouts assume that you have a small troop of experienced campers. They're for things like backpack camping, survival camping, camping in unusual conditions such as snow or while mountain-climbing, etc. Those are all amazing skills to have, and older Scouts should definitely be able to work towards accomplishing them, but in order to take 13 kids on a Leave No Trace backpack camping trip in a state park or forest a driveable distance from my house, I'd have to take them in two separate groups on two separate weekends and convince at least one of my co-leaders to do the same. The logistics alone... just... well, I'm not going to rule a trip like that out, but let's just say there are logistics.

Also, I do tend to have a reliable group of the same kids who always sign up for troop camping trips, but I also tend to have a couple of less-experienced campers who get lured into every trip, which is AWESOME. I adore camping, and I adore taking kids camping, and every time a kid who'd describe herself as a non-campers gets snookered into coming camping with me I do a happy dance. But the thing about camping is that, in order to have a safe and enjoyable experience, you have to have a progression of skills. You can't take a kid who's never been camping backpack camping as her very first camping experience, or at least I wouldn't if I wanted her to ever want to come camping with me again! A kid who's only ever been car camping also needs to learn some skills before she goes full-on survival camping. 

This particular trip was a combo cabin/tent camping trip at an in-state Girl Scout camp, and I used it to ensure that every kid who attended left with the same basic camping skill set. They should feel confident cabin camping, car camping, and tent camping, and should have a very short learning curve to master just a few additional skills for backpack camping, survival camping, and camping in unusual conditions. To do that, I pulled out a couple of retired Girl Scout badges and IPs, and adjusted their requirements to achieve what I wanted.

Cadettes earned the retired Advanced Outdoor Cooking badge and the Cadette First Aid badge (and our Girl Scout camp's fun patch). Seniors and Ambassadors earned the retired Camping IP and the First Aid badge at their level (and the Girl Scout camp's fun patch). Everyone was offered the same activities, of course, regardless of if it was required for one of their particular badges, and anyone was welcome to opt out of any of the activities and have unstructured free time, instead, with the understanding that opting out of an activity required for one of their badges meant they wouldn't earn that badge.

Cadette Advanced Outdoor Cooking

For the retired Cadette Advanced Outdoor Cooking badge, we did the following activities:

• Demonstrate the ability to start a fire. Most of my troop knows how to start a fire, but some kids didn't, and this is a super important skill to be confident about. The best way to teach it is hands-on: I had the kids arrange themselves around our (thankfully generously-sized) fire pit, and I gave them each a box of matches and an egg carton fire starter. I spoke very briefly about how to start a fire and what to use and how to safely collect those items, we went over fire emergencies and I gave them a quick First Aid badge lecture on first aid for minor burns, and then I set them free to either learn or practice.

No matter how old they are, no matter how many times they've done it before, EVERY kid I've ever met loves to start a fire. The egg carton fire starters burn for a good ten minutes, so there's a lot of room for troubleshooting a poorly-set fire, and the more experienced kids automatically assisted the less confident ones in a way that was really sweet to watch.

And when everyone had built a fire, all the little fires were safe and sound in the fire pit, ready for our Dinner Prep Patrol to combine them into one big fire for hot dogs and s'mores!

• Learn and practice stick cooking. I was about 95% confident that every kid had roasted hot dogs and marshmallows on a stick before, but you never know! It's an easy dinner for the first night, and it gives me the chance to make sure everyone knows how to sanitize their roasting stick before use, not stab each other with burning metal, and clean their stick of sticky marshmallow afterwards.
• Learn and practice the three-tub method of dishwashing. Knowing how to wash dishes when you don't have a sink is crucial to your ability to keep yourself healthy, clean, and well-fed while camping. I demonstrated this method after dinner the first night, and for each meal afterwards the Clean-up Patrol set up the three tubs and washed the cooking and serving dishes, and everyone else washed their own dishes. By the time we went home, everyone had plenty of practice!
• Learn and practice pie iron cooking. This is a car camping staple, and a great way to make a regular backyard fire night fancier and more interesting. It's also an easy way to trick a hot breakfast with plenty of filling protein into teenager tummies! Since there would be people around our campsite for the whole day and a campfire is everyone's favorite part of camping, the Breakfast Prep Patrol started another big campfire for us (practicing those fire-starting skills!) and everyone had the opportunity to make themselves a grilled sandwich for breakfast, choosing among lunch meats, cheeses, peanut butter, jelly, and fruit. If you've never had a grilled peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich for breakfast, you should try it! I'll even let you sneak in some chocolate!
• Build and cook with tin can stoves and buddy burners. A tin can stove and a buddy burner are great tools to take on a backpack camping trip. They're light, portable, and will cook your food and boil your water almost as fast as a store-bought backpacking stove. And they're made entirely from literal trash!

This is a fairly time-consuming project, and it takes a LONG time for the wax to harden, so we made our stoves and buddy burners before lunch and used them to cook dinner. If you're going to make them while you're camping, you also need a campsite with electricity, as I brought both my crafts-only crock pots and used them to melt the wax for the buddy burners.

We followed my tutorial for making a tin can stove and buddy burner, and before we got started I gave a brief First Aid badge lecture on first aid for a cut or puncture. Amazingly, nobody needed to practice the first aid they'd learned during this project, although I had everyone use the manual can opener on my pocket knife and so I dulled it horribly and it definitely needs some first aid now.

For dinner that night, everybody heated up chili on their tin can stoves and used it to make either walking tacos or chili dogs. The placement of these stoves was very problematic, as the fire pit area was clearly not designed to accommodate nine tiny and hot stovetops. Fortunately, nobody stepped on a stove and nobody fell into the fire, so that's as much as anyone could ask!

I'd wanted everyone to have the chance to use their tin can stoves to make pancakes the next morning, but most of the kids had early pick-up times and I was afraid that the wax in their buddy burners wouldn't have time to solidify if I let them spend the morning cooking. Parents probably wouldn't appreciate molten wax spilled all over the trunks of their cars, right?

Oh, well. We'll make pancakes next time!

• Learn the uses for and sample dehydrated backpacking meals. My someday goal is to teach my troop how to make dehydrated backpacking meals from scratch, but during a pandemic is not the time for that. Thank goodness for super-expensive but super-fun store-bought backpacking meals, I guess!

Ramen is my secret gateway into the world of backpacking meals, because the kids are all OBSESSED with Ramen. I did bring some Ramen, but I also brought several selections of fancy dehydrated backpacking meals for the kids to choose from:

Just between us, I don't care much for any of these, but the kids LOVED them. The self-heating ones, in particular, were a major source of amazement and wonder for nine kids who'd been completely without internet for over 24 hours by that point.

• Make and sample trail mix. This is another activity that's so simple that you might not think to do it with older kids, but older kids still love it! Trail mix is so easy to make that a Daisy can do it, and yet so fun to make that my co-leader had to pre-portion the precious M&Ms to make sure that the kids shared them without fighting. 

Camping IP for Seniors and Ambassadors

I considered every activity that we did for the Cadette Advanced Outdoor Cooking badge as also part of the Camping IP, as well as these additional activities:

• Learn the basics of cabin and tent camping. This includes all the chores and housekeeping involved in setting up our campsite, maintaining it, and tearing it down at the end of our trip. Everyone was on a Patrol and had mealtime and cleaning chores, was responsible for the maintenance and cleaning of their cabin or tent, and followed all our troop rules for group camping.
• Learn useful knots for camping. One of our troop's co-leaders is a knot-tying genius, and she taught the kids several useful knots:

The kids' knot-tying handiwork included learning how to make clotheslines between trees, and that led to what might have been their favorite activity:

• Do a camp craft. Our other co-leader set up an activity in which both kids and adults dyed T-shirts with water pistols! It was so ridiculously fun, and the shirts came out great.

Later, the kids went through the trouble of painstakingly rinsing out all the water pistols so they could have a water fight.

• Make egg carton fire starters. The kids made these at the same time as they made the buddy burners, using the wax leftover after they filled all their burners:

Each kid took home a few to empower their own fire-building at family events, and I put several back in our troop stash to replace the ones we'd used during the camping trip.

CSA First Aid badge

Here are the activities that the Cadettes, Seniors, and Ambassadors used to earn the First Aid badge at their own level:

• Learn first aid for cuts and burns. We covered these lessons during our tin can stove building and fire-starting activities.
• Make a backpack first-aid kit. One of our troop's co-leaders cut out felt first-aid kits that the kids could applique and hand-sew with embroidery floss, and I used troop money to buy enough supplies for each kid to stock her kit. I was adamant that I wasn't going to buy my Scouts "white kid" band-aids, so I was stoked to find this colorful set!

• Discuss and practice wilderness survival. We covered a LOT of ground with this step! It probably could have been an outdoor survival badge on its own, but the kids were so interested and engaged that perhaps we'll try that another time, enabling us to go even deeper into the topic and explore more skills. We discussed proper preparation for outdoor adventures, the importance of the buddy system, and the emergency supplies you should always carry with you during outdoor adventures. And even though I promised myself that I would not terrify the children with tales taken from my Special Interest, People Who Die in the Wilderness (Particularly National Parks), I did, indeed tell them tales of People Who Died in in the Wilderness. 

Our knot expert showed the kids how they could use the knots she'd taught them to make an emergency shelter, and we discussed ways that one could further insulate the shelter and incorporate a fire for warmth. We discussed the things that you DO need in order to survive until rescue--warmth, water, comfort--and the things that you DON'T need in order to survive until rescue--food, moving around. 

Later that night, I brought out this kit and taught the kids to make paracord bracelets so that they'd always have some cordage with them on their adventures. It was a little wild and wooly at times, teaching nine teenagers a fairly process-oriented craft, but all of them got the hang of it and made bracelets that they were happy with. Some of the kids got so into it that they wanted to make even more bracelets, so I gave them some of the extra paracord from the kit to take home and promised them that we could try some different designs next time. I'm looking forward to that even more than they are!

• Learn and practice wilderness evacuation scenarios. We had the most hilarious time with this! I taught the kids a few of the easier emergency evacuation methods: One-Person Walk Assist, Firefighter Carry, Two-Person Clothes Drag, and Two-Person Seat. Sometime I'll bring a blanket and a couple of poles and also teach them the Blanket Drag and Pole and Blanket Stretcher, but the kids had plenty of fun trying out just the ones I showed them. 
• Learn emergency methods for purifying water. If you're backpack or survival camping, you'll have a portable water purification method, so for this step we simply discussed ways that you could purify water in an emergency, such as boiling it or adding a little bleach or iodine. 

I kind of can't believe that we got through THAT MANY activities, and still had time for hiking, wading in the creek, hanging out by the fire, having water fights, visiting the camp llamas, and eating endless s'mores, but we did, and didn't feel feel ruled by an agenda or rushed for time, either. Somehow, the nature sprites that rule that Girl Scout camp must have sensed that these nine kids and three adults needed this perfect, magical, happy camping experience after fifteen months of everything else that we've been doing. It makes me glad to think back on the confident campers who left that campground, the campers who can build their own fires and cook on their own homemade stoves, the campers who can keep themselves safe and alive if they're ever lost in the woods, the campers who can evacuate someone in an emergency, the campers who fell in love with knot-tying, the campers who got to have, at long, long, last, a practically normal weekend with their friends. 

And before we left for home, some of those campers even offered their suggestions for what our NEXT camping trip should include!

The Easiest DIY Newspaper Seed Starting Pots

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2017.

Seriously, y'all, these are the easiest seed starting pots on the planet. There's no origami involved. No fancy tools. Heck, making these seed starting pots is even easier than opening the packaging on store-bought seed starting supplies! 

 I LOVE these DIY newspaper seed starting pots, because you can make them as-needed, and there's no waste-you plant your sprouted seedlings right in this pot, which decomposes to enrich the soil and allow your baby plant's roots to spread. No trauma to the babies, nothing to carry to the trash bin--it's a double win!

DIY Newspaper Seed Starting Pots

All you need are: 

  newspaper. If you don't take the newspaper yourself, just ask around. A single day's paper is enough to give you plenty of pots to start out with. 

  beer bottle. A hardship to obtain, I know. If you don't have one, I know for a fact that you have something similar on hand. Check your pantry. Check your fridge. I know you can do this! 

  plant markers (optional). You can write the name of the plant directly onto the newspaper pot with Sharpie, and the writing will last long enough for you to get the pot into the ground, but I paid my kid a penny a pop to write me a bunch of plant markers onto popsicle sticks, and you know what? Those work just as well as the cuter plant markers. 

 1. Rip your newspaper right down the middle. Don't use the ad flyers, and don't use the Sunday comics (because you're saving those for wrapping paper, right?). But all the other sections? Just go ahead and rip them all right down the middle. 

 2. Wrap a strip of newspaper around your beer bottle. You want about two inches of of the strip to hang off of the bottom of the bottle, so I find that lining the top of the strip up along the top edge of the beer bottle's label works well. Keep wrapping the strip around the bottle until it's all wrapped up--you'll overlap it on the bottle a few times, which will make your pot stronger. 

 3. Fold in the bottom of the newspaper cylinder. Neatly fold it up against the base of the bottle, all the way around. 

  4. Slide the newspaper seed starting pot off of the beer bottle. When it's free, give the bottom fold a good crease all the way around. Once you set it in a tray and fill it with damp soil, it will learn to keep that fold, and by the time you're ready to plant, you may have to rip it or snip it with scissors to open the bottom back up. 

 These newspaper seed starting pots don't last forever, obviously, what with staying damp and being filled with dirt, but they will last for more than long enough to grow your plants from seed to good, sturdy plant start. If you set them in a tray, you'll also be able to gently water them by putting water only in the tray and letting the newspaper wick the water up to the rest of the pot.

Eleventh Grade Graduation at the Zoo

 

Last school year, in those magical pre-pandemic times, the kids had their first day of eighth and tenth grades at the Cincinnati Zoo.

This school year, I don't particularly know what Will was doing on her first day, as I was busy helping Syd figure out HER first day of navigating a school-issued shitty laptop, Canvas, Microsoft Teams, and a schedule of live and asynchronous lessons that, I kid you not, completely changed every two weeks for months.

It continued much like that for the entire school year. Will worked mostly independently while I gave most of my emotional and mental energy to supporting Syd. Will worked her butt off, kept to her schedule, and completed her tasks, more or less off of my radar. It's not how we've ever homeschooled before, it's not how I like to homeschool, and I hope it's not how we'll homeschool next year, but Will made it work.

Now that we're both fully vaccinated, though, I was SO ready to surprise my hard-working kid with a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo on her last day of eleventh grade!

I think this might be the first time that I've ever taken Will to the zoo without her sister along? It certainly never happened when I was homeschooling two kids, and thanks to the pandemic, none of the field trips I'd hoped to take with just Will this school year materialized--we didn't so much as go to the art museum across town together, much less that trip to Florida we'd been planning and looking forward to, sigh.

I reminded Will, then, that SHE was in charge of our day. She decided where we went, what we saw, and how long we stayed at each exhibit. This meant, of course, that we went EVERYWHERE. We saw EVERYTHING. And we stayed in front of each exhibit for a completely interminable twenty minutes, at LEAST. I mean, you apparently have to read the signage, then watch the animals for a billion years, then read the signage again, then watch the animals before. Maybe check out that sign again. Maybe peek just one more time at the animals. Then walk fifty feet and repeat with another set of animals.

For instance, we probably hung out at the touch tank for an hour. Field trips and families came and went, splashing and screaming obnoxiously and scaring the Chondricthyans over in the other part of the tank, but Will and I camped out at one quiet end, where she leaned over quietly and calmly and proceeded to pet every creature in that habitat:

 

We had to skip ahead to the penguins and then circle back to the sea lions because there were too many unmasked breathers our first time through:

We were pretty sure that some scientist stole these from the macaques they were studying, and we're pissed on their behalf:

Apparently, Will has grown out of wanting to sit in the splash zone during the dolphin show, but I haven't grown out of laughing with delight every time a dolphin so much as moves its flipper:

At the flamingo habitat, there was a zoo employee running a virtual field trip on his phone. I was VERY impressed at his ability to livestream flamingos, see all the tiny Zoom hands raised, acknowledge children by name, and ready-reference various facts... on a PHONE. These days, I have to push my glasses down my nose and peer nearsightedly just to read my email on my phone!

The rock hyrax was my favorite animal on this day. Look at its silly little munching face!

We were watching the lemurs when it started to rain, and it was absolutely hilarious to see them run for their indoor enclosure as fast as the humans running for the awnings!

This tiger is very impressive because there's a toddler right behind us, and the tiger wants to eat it:

There were places in the zoo where I was anxious about our safety, because vaccinated or not, I don't want to cram in with a bunch of random people all breathing in the same space. Will and I got ourselves trapped under the tiger awning when a bunch of people with strollers rolled in right after us and took up all the walking room. I was pretty cool about it until a preschooler, stumbling around and touching all the things, coughed directly on Will's... knees, I guess, but still. I might have panicked a bit because all I really remember is covering Will's mouth and nose with my hand, taking her arm, and marching her straight out of there, double strollers packed with babies be damned. We were several feet down the path before I realized that I was literally smothering my uncomplaining child and let her go.

We also had a bad time hanging out inside with the orangutans, thanks to a hundred thousand adult breathers who felt like masks violate their civil rights. I saw one woman who was wearing a a face... veil, I guess? It was made of something gauzy and only tied at the top, so every time she leaned over to tend her two toddlers it simply floated out of the way of her and all her mouth germs. One of her toddlers sneezed without covering its mouth and I dragged Will out of there, only barely remembering not to smother her this time.

But look at the outside of the orangutan habitat!

Way up there is an orangutan looking down on us!

We were much happier in the desert, where Will could lean against the rails and admire every animal individually for twenty minutes at a time while all the other breathers wandered by without stopping:

My nerves might have been a little bit shot by this time, because I came closer than I ever have in my life to screaming at a stranger in front of the meerkat habitat. Will and I, both unused to public outings, had been low-key irritated by every other human at the zoo for a while: why do they all talk so loudly? Why do they insist on shouting at their children to look at some particular thing, and then as soon as the kid gets interested, work just as hard to wheedle the kid away to go look at some other thing? Why do they all scream the name of every animal's cartoon counterpart when they see it? Why do they all wear their masks under their grossly breathing noses?

So there Will and I were, minding our own business quietly watching the meerkats go about theirs, when a family rolls up next to us. Of course they've got a double stroller, and of course they're talking super loudly, and of course when the dad sees the meerkats he starts to scream, sort of attempting to be tuneful, "MOVE IT, MOVE IT! MOVE IT, MOVE IT!" 

Then, when nobody in his family responds, he screams, "Get it? Like the movie!"

Oh. My. Gawd.

First of all, THAT IS NOT THE CORRECT MOVIE. The movie with the "Move it, Move it" song is about LEMURS. WHICH ARE ALSO IN THIS ZOO. He could go obnoxiously sing that song to the lemurs and at least be accurate, if still unbearable.

Second of all, meerkats HAVE A SONG. FROM A DIFFERENT MOVIE. WHICH IS MORE FAMOUS THAN MADAGASCAR. Seriously, have you never heard of, oh, I don't know... THE LION KING?!? He could still sing an obnoxious song to the meerkats! Surely he knows at least the chorus of "Hakuna Matata"?!?

Here's Will sharing a commiserating look with a meerkat who I bet knows all the words to "Hakuna Matata" by now:

The cheetahs are also my zoo favorites, ever since the day after a family trip to the zoo we found out that one of them had escaped its enclosure! Cheetahs really just love to lay around and be comfy, and this cheetah (one of the brothers below), saw a comfier spot above his habitat and hopped on up to it. He happily napped there until a zoo employee just happened to spot him.

Here's another set of cheetah siblings who also love each other:

Okay, my other OTHER favorite part of the zoo is when we come during the spring and summer and the butterflies are in their pavilion!

After visiting with every single butterfly, we had just enough time to see every single flower in the outdoor gardens, too:

This thing is so cool! It's a super heavy ball that you can roll around the sand to make prints themed to the current season:

The balls for the other seasons are stored on pedestals around it:

We were waiting at the front gate the second that this zoo opened, and we did not drag ourselves out until five minutes after it closed. I'd say it was a successful last day of eleventh grade!