This dairy farm is about two hours north of my house on I-65. It's worth the drive -- the kids can see how the cows are raised and milked, and (if any are about to calve) visit the birthing barn to see new calves born. They also make cheese, ice cream, etc. there. A friend of mine takes her third grade class every year.
This is coming up soon! Next weekend, there will be a Maker Faire right here in Indy... it's our city's first one. Maker Faire is a show-and-tell gathering for "makers" -- tinkerers, inventors, programmers, hardware hackers, and more. Kids can look at the things locals have made and try activities like using common items to construct a protective device that will keep a raw egg uncracked after its launch from a giant slingshot. It's held in conjunction with Conner Prairie's Country Fair, so we can also visit their historical mini-villages, see historic machines, and more. Cost is $14 per adult, $9 per youth (children under two are free).
Saturday, September 17, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. & Sunday, September 18, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
I have most of the supplies for this, though we'd have to wait until after fall break (mid-October) for me to pick it up from my parents' place. We'd need to pick up paraffin (about $3/lb. when ordered online -- how much we need depends on how many candles each kid makes), save some old Crayola Crayons for color (I have a bunch to get us started). This assumes we are doing molded candles, as molds can be re-used. Jar candles would require us to buy jars.
Pencil baskets are a good starting project, and cost about $6/kit. I can bring the tools. We'd also need something big (rubber tub, bath tub, large laundry tub, etc) to fill with warm water for soaking the reed.
If I tack the supplies on to one of my bulk orders, we can get the consumables (warp thread, stitching thread, beads, beeswax) for about $3/kid. The troop will need to collect sticks beforehand, and I will teach them to make a very basic frame-type loom. (The only other supply we need for loom construction is twine, and I have plenty to go around.)
I have tons of small pieces of tooling leather suitable for practice pieces or small projects (key-chains, etc.). I have enough tools for 2-3 kids to work at a time, so if we did it as one of many stations (where kids rotate between each as they finish projects) we could do this for free. For $125, the troop could pick up a youth group kit from Tandy Leather Factory -- this would provide tools, dyes, etc. for 8 kids to work at a time, plus 25 bookmarks and 25 wristbands.
If someone can bring a couple of extra pairs of scissors, we can do this for free. I have enough supplies for a troop of 15 to do 2-3 bracelets each.
We could pair with a far-away troop to give the girls some pen pals -- this would be just the cost of paper, envelopes and stamps, and could easily be paired with:
-
learning to use a fountain pen and ink Cheap fountain pens would be $3 ea., good student fountain pens would be about $9 ea., and my favorite starter pens (meant for grown-ups, but suitable for careful kids) are $14 ea. I can supply enough ink to keep them busy for a year. :)book binding
-
paper making I haven't prices supplies to build the frames, but I suspect that it would run about $15/frame and kids could work in groups of 2-4. The rest of the supplies are negligible in cost: lots of water, paper we want to recycle or fibers (cotton, linen, wood, grass, banana, whatever) we want to use, and a starch to bind it with.
-
calligraphy We could either learn to make feather quills (cheapest option, kind of finicky, wear down after little use) or buy dip pens ($5 to $7 each set, will last forever, easier to use than quills). I can teach a couple of basic calligraphic hands (ornamental writing styles) for making beautiful certificates, birthday cards, etc. We'd need some good paper to work on (about $1-$2 per kid if we buy in bulk), and I could supply the ink.
November is National Novel Writing Month. I'll be joining nearly a million other lunatics, err, writers worldwide in trying to write a 50,000 word novel in just thirty days. NaNoWriMo has a children's program as well where we could set a reasonable word count goal for our troop and even compete with another youth group or class somewhere. They'd send us progress charts and some other goodies, and I have a bunch of activities we could use to keep things interesting. Afterward, we can publish the kids' books (using a service like lulu.com that prints copies as we order them) which makes a great fund-raiser.
This would be a great talk to do for troop members and parents. I have a talk I do, and with enough notice I can borrow an agent from the FBI's Cyber Crime unit to back me up.book binding
A great first step to becoming more confident on the computer is installing a "newbie friendly" Linux distribution like Ubuntu (what I'm putting on Sarita's laptop). If families don't have/can't afford a computer for this I can hook them up with a nonprofit that will give families recycled computers in exchange for a small donation or for free after some volunteer time.
I can contact the Red Cross or one of the local hospitals -- you can usually get someone to send an EMT, nurse, or doctor out to talk to the kids and teach basic first aid (CPR, dressing a wound, splinting a broken bone, etc.).
An important prerequisite to any camping trip! We could do some geocaching to teach GPS usage, but analogue navigation (celestial, map-and-compass, etc) is just as -- if not more -- important. There are compasses on the market for $4 or so that many troops buy, but they tend not to be accurate enough for my standards. The traditional beginner's compass is the Brunton Classic which runs about $11 but will last years (I know soldiers, mountain rescue workers, etc. who still use the ones they got as children). It's the sort of thing I don't like to go cheap on, because accurate navigation can mean the difference between life and death if one is lost in the wilderness. If we can't get cheap or donated maps, I can buy some waterproof mapping paper and print some stuff from the USGS (United States Geological Survey), it's just a pain to format.
Covering this usually starts in preparation for a camping trip, and continues out in the wild. The first couple trips out, I focus on the ten essentials:
- Food
- Hydration
- Shelter
- Protection from sun and insects
- Navigation
- First Aid
- Fire (for warmth, cooking, signal, etc.)
- Communication (proper radio usage, trail marking, signaling in an emergency)
- Construction/repair (for shelter/equipment)
- Light
This doesn't have to be as expensive as it sounds: In college, I did ultralight backpacking -- multi-day backpacking on ~20 lbs. of gear per person -- and I made much of my own gear. I always make my own camp food as my allergy to chemical preservatives rules out all but the most expensive ready-made stuff.
Pillows or small stuffed animals are workable hand-sewing projects. If enough families have sewing machines (or we could find a shop willing to lend us their classroom) we could do pajamas or a small quilting project or something. Eventually, we could learn to sew our own backpacks or hammocks for a camping trip (more advanced).
My mom has tons of material we can use on lineage quilts, quilts used as signals for the underground railroad, and so on. I can provide fabric and quilting services and we can buy fabric crayons, then let the kids each color a square that becomes part of a troop quilt to be raffled off.
I'm a big fan of strategy games -- they teach critical thinking, mental agility, creativity, good sportsmanship, and so many other important skills, in addition to being an incredibly fun way to socialize. There are the classics -- Go and Chess -- as well as more modern games like Attika, Forbidden Island, Settlers of Catan, Pentago, and so on. I have a fairly big collection of 2-6 player games, so we could split off into tables and try a bunch of different ones.
Tabletop roleplay is somewhere between an acting class and a board game. Players work on their reading skills, math skills (the game mechanics are all based on probabilities and dice rolls), critical thinking skills (puzzles!), ideas of character that translate into acting or writing, creativity, and ability to cooperate. There are a number of games out there, but I'd recommend Earthdawn for two reasons: it is a very positive, hero-focused game, lacking some of the darker options of World of Darkness, Dungeons and Dragons, and similar systems, and I have all the books and license to print character sheets and other resources -- all the kids would need are a set of dice and a pencil each. A matched set of dice starts at $5.50 (translucent or marbled plastic) and goes up if someone wants something fancy. We could get enough for the whole troop (assuming 15 players) for less than $4 each if we buy by the pound (we'd get random, unmatched colors).
Roleplay really doesn't get old -- we could get a running game going once a month or something. The ideal game is 4-7 players, but we could do one big game to learn with, then I could teach you or another adult to GM (Game Master -- i.e. run the game) and split the group.
We wouldn't be able to do this in the next few months, because I need a new rig, but I could teach a lesson about radio and how it works, then help the troop contact hams (licensed amateur radio operators) in faraway places for fun. If we can get on the schedule, and if the Russians have any English-speaking cosmonauts up at the time, we might even call the space station.
If you have a space we can use, we could set up a compost, till, plant, and care for a troop garden. When it comes time to harvest, this could lead to everything from cooking to canning to crafts using what we've grown. Depending on what we grow, this can be done nearly free.
We can bake cupcakes and decorate them with buttercream like I did Sarita's cake. The ingredients are cheap (cake mix, butter, eggs, water, confectioner's sugar, and shortening), and I have enough decorating supplies to go around (food dye, decorating bags and tips, etc.). If none of the parents have a 6qt. stand mixer, give me some advance notice and I'll borrow one -- it's really the only way to do icing in sufficient bulk for a group of over a dozen kids.
It might be fun to pick an event or two and have the troop cook a themed meal for their friends and family -- we could do the first thanksgiving, foods from around the world (or from some particular exotic locale), a spooky Halloween feast, or a fancy Valentine's Day tea.
Paint can be had for about $2/bottle at a craft store. I can get good T-shirts from the warehouse my mom uses to stock her quilting business for under $2 each, if we buy in sets of 12 (we can mix sizes and colors freely).
One way of embossing -- creating raised designs -- on paper is by using a special powder on freshly stamped designs, then heating it with a hot-air tool called an embossing gun. I have a couple of different ink pads and some embossing pens, the embossing gun, embossing powders, and a few stamps. If we can get others to bring in some rubber stamps, and perhaps buy another set of stamp pads or embossing pens for the troop to share, the troop could create fancy embossed paper, note cards, gift bags, or something else out of paper. We'd probably blow $15-$25 on pads/pens for the troop, and as long as we have enough stamps to go around, we only need to buy whatever paper we will emboss.
I have a huge supply of invisible (UV-reactive) ink for secret messages. We can make fingerprint kits out of common household items, play games of observation, and learn basic cryptography (the science of making and breaking encoded messages).