Little Campers :: Service Project

For the kickoff to our homemade summer camp, we arranged to visit the school of Keri's daughter, Piper (and by 'we' I mean Keri did all the arranging), and we worked in the campus garden for almost an hour picking up trash, pulling weeds, and harvesting the veggies. For a motley crew of Mamas and kids ranging in age from almost 9 to not quite 4, we got some pretty good work done, and I'd like to think the campus is a bit better off for our efforts!

We then took the early summer harvest over to Our Daily Bread, a church-based community soup kitchen that the school garden program benefits, and gave all those cabbages, carrots, tomatoes and other odds-and-ends to the head chef Lisa for use in the lunches prepared for those in need. She told us they serve about 350 lunches per day, and the fall of this year will mark about 800,000 people served to date! She assured us that they would use every part of the harvest we brought them.

Those sweet people then gave us cold bottled water, special drinks for the kiddos, and those coveted super-sugary sleeved frozen ices that ended up making the kids feel over-the-moon good about helping others, ha!

The kiddos also earned their first Little Campers trinket, a "Service Heart." They seemed pretty happy with them.

Made from wooden cutouts found at a local craft supply store, I just sanded them down, gave them a good base coat, and then did my best to paint that classic symbol of helping on each one. They already had small holes drilled in each cutout, so they will be easy to whip-stitch onto their Little Campers sashes... eventually...

We got hot, we got dirty, and a few of us got plum worn out (Henry is conked out as I type this), but I think it was a great start to this little endeavor we've launched into, and everyone is excited about the next session, so high five!

Next week: Gardening Project!