Take a kid outdoors on a walk, and odds are she won't come back empty-handed. Onto the counter goes the fistful of cool leaves, the twisted branch, the seed pod--and the problem. What to do with all that natural booty? Camp directors, who have been dealing with this phenomenon for decades, long ago came up with a clever solution: Add a few materials and turn the stuff into crafts.
As a veteran of a dozen summers as a camper and counselor in Colorado, I've watched kids make prized possessions from the most ordinary materials. Some now seem embarrassingly dated (like those macramé plant holders in the '70s). But in their place, other crafts, like the ones here, seem to constantly evolve from kids' imaginations. Easy to do and portable enough to fit in a kid's duffel bag, these projects last as mementos of summer's adventures. It doesn't matter whether you make them in the backcountry or your backyard. Camp crafts aren't as much about camp, I've found, as about kids taking simple things and turning them into treasures.
Barbara Rowley is a contributing editor to FAMILYFUN.
