Camp Candyland Girls Camp Ideas

For the last several months I’ve had sort of a major project going on in my life that I haven’t mentioned much about. I decided it would be fun to show and tell you all about it. I was the camp director for our church-meaning I took a bunch of teenage girls camping for a week. Now, this isn’t just any camping trip-it’s themed, it’s creative, it’s fun. Those of you who are LDS and participate in Girls Camp, I thought it might be fun for you to get some ideas and for those of you who aren’t, I still think you’ll have fun getting a peek into how I spent last week.

Camp Candyland Girl’s Camp Ideas:

Let me start out by saying that I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We are sometimes called Mormons. Girls Camp is a tradition where each congregation take the girls between the ages of 12-18 camping for about 5 days during the summer. There’s a theme, there are songs, there are crafts, there are spiritual devotionals and there is tons of fun! I honestly love it, though right now I am fairly exhausted by the idea of it all.

So, our theme for camp this year was Come Unto Christ. That was the overarching theme (on a Stake level).

In our ward (congregation) camp, the theme I picked Camp Candyland. Let me just say that I can’t think of a theme that’s much more fun than that!

Here’s a peek into what we did. I hope this helps others who are planning camp or other activities!

 

CandyLand Board:

The main focal point of our camp site was a giant Candy Land board that I painted! This is done on a full size bed sheet with acrylic paint. Yes, it took up way too much of my life, but the girls loved it. I also printed out the characters onto iron on transfer paper and then ironed them on.

Come Unto Christ Board:

To remind the girls about the true meaning of camp-to Come Unto Christ-I taught a lesson the Sunday before we went about how Candy Land could represent this path. I put Christ at the end and then we talked about what the steps are to come unto Christ (baptism, temple covenant, faith, repentance, etc.) and who some of the key players in that journey are (prophet, parents, leaders, friends, Holy Ghost, Jesus, etc.) and created a Candy Land board to represent this. We then hung it at camp as a reminder.

Welcome Packets:

When the girls arrived at camp, (I got there a few hours before them), we had a welcome packet ready for each one.

In this packet was a water bottle filled with candy, a sweatshirt (see below), their stake camp shirt, a packet with some conference talks about the themes for the days, a necklace, lanyards with the daily schedule and songs on them, and a journal.

I laid them all out on a table to look cute when they got there:

And then we hung candy from the canopy over the table.

Sweatshirts:

This is probably my very favorite part! I used glitter heat transfer vinyl and cut it out with my Silhouette and ironed it on to sweatshirts. I got the sweatshirts online in fun candy colors-pink, purple, lime green and blue.

I created an image of the temple with a candy land like pathway leading up to it for the back:

Here is a link to my file for this temple in Silhouette Studio if you would like to use it:

Temple Cutting File

 

And the front said Come Unto Christ and had their names:

Necklaces:

We gave the girls beads or charms throughout the week for various activities and good deeds, and I wanted a necklace for them to string it all on, so I created these little ones with bottle caps (from the craft store) and twine and the logo I designed for camp:

Want to use that logo for something? I am happy to share! Here it is: (just right click and save)

 

Or for a sign:

Decorations:

One of our leaders had some wood slats, so we decided to spray paint them and create a candy pathway:

Another leader also had some girls come over and they made lollipops to stick in the ground. These are just made by putting 2 paper plates together on a stick. Also a pool noodle rolled up. And then they did gumdrops by painting paper cups and sticking a kabob stick on them and putting that into the ground.

A few other fun things we did that I don’t have pictures of:

The lanyards with the schedules on them-on the back they looked like candy land cards (the ones that you draw to move along the game board).

For camp kickoff I used large lollipops as the invitations and printed out stickers with all the details and stuck it to the sucker part.

Our scripture and journal time was called Sweet Time.

We had lots and lots and lots of candy!

I assigned out the daily devotionals to match the candy land characters. So we had the Grandma Nut devotional or the Jolly devotional to go along with our themes. So for example, my day was Be Perfected in our Covenants and my character was Jolly so we talked about how keeping our covenants helps us be happy.

We candy bombed the other wards. We read the story of the candy bomber, then made bags of candy and parachutes and threw them into each campground.

We also made candy leis for the bishopric and stake leaders.

For final awards I got different types of candy and made them awards. Like the Starburst award for the star of the talent show or the Extra (gum) award for the girl who needed extra sleep and extra help waking up.

 

Oh boy! I am sure there is more but frankly, I am exhausted from all of this and can’t think straight! I really hope this helps others in their planning!