The following post is part 4 of a 5 part series by guest blogger Aimee Mae Riley. Aimee held a princess camp for her church. Aimee used the Princess Parable Series in her camp curriculum and shares the details of the camp below for our benefit. Enjoy!
Thursday- Princess Charity’s Courageous Heart
When the girls arrived, they found a plain princess dress on card stock to decorate as they liked. We then helped to cut out the dresses and provided them with princess cut-out dolls and more cut-out dresses to play with. Let me say that these were a huge hit, but they are also the most time-consuming thing we had to prepare. Cutting out dolls and assorted dresses for fourteen girls takes a couple of hours, and I had my 7yo daughter, 9yo son and my two camp helpers assisting with the project over the course of the week. In my opinion, it was totally worth it, though.
We sent each girl home with a doll, which each of them named (Princess Grace was a popular choice, but I particularly liked Princess Rainbow Blossom and Princess Patience), and the dress they had decorated. I meant to send an extra outfit or two along with them, too, but I forgot. This craft alone took up the first 45 minutes of our day, and we had to coax the girls over to story time.
Our story involved Princess Charity, the youngest of the five sisters. She is impetuous but has a big heart, and by saving a young boy who is hurt on the other side of the road- which is also the neighboring kingdom’s forbidden territory- she brings peace to the two kingdoms. Her story echoes the familiar Good Samaritan story found in Luke 10:25-37. We talked about who was the youngest in their families, if any had ever been horseback riding (Charity’s pet is a horse), and we covered some of the discussion questions available with the story.
We then made ribbon wands out of dowels, washi tape (I found sparkly dark pink and gold washi tape in the clearance bin at Michaels), and ribbon, along with these adorable sparkly styrofoam balls (I found a bag of them for 50 cents at Goodwill- score!)
This was a putsy project that required the three of us camp leaders to do all of the work; the girls simply selected the colors they wanted for their tape and ribbons. Here’s a tip, though: instead of wrapping the tape around and around the dowel, wrap it once lengthwise around the dowel; you will save on tape, and it turns out much smoother. It is an exact, tight fit around the thinnest dowel available at Michaels.
For snack, we had apple slices (since horses love apples) and pretzels (since all the girls like them). The girls ended the day with their coloring sheets.
Tomorrow, we will cover the last day of princess camp, with Princess Joy’s Birthday Blessing and a party!
For more princess camp or party ideas, check out my Pinterest Princess Camp board.
Aimee Mae Riley is a mother of 5 children from Wisconsin. You can read her blog at Whispers of Worth.
