Bunchland

Late August and early September is when we shop for school supplies, lament that the days are getting shorter and spend one last glorious long weekend at the cottage. As we prepare to put away our flip-flops and beach blankets, we remember all the crazy-awesome fun stuff we did at Camp Bunchland. From gourmet popsicles and s’mores to backyard movie theatres and campfires, summer 2010 will always be remembered as the best summer ever. Until we top it next summer, that is.

How we spent our summer vacation

Packing for and then riding the bus to Camp Bunchland

Using fresh fruit and herbs to make gourmet popsicles

Sitting under a blanket of stars and watching movies in the backyard

Roasting s’mores over a crackling backyard campfire  Read more...

A family round of board games is a cottage tradition

Has your family cottage trip ever included a rousing round of board games? The shouting as the competition gets intense, the pitting of half the family against the other, maybe the odd accusation of cheating. It’s the perfect kind of unplugged fun, and if your cottage is anything like ours you have a stack of dusty old games piled in a corner, ready to be pulled out on a rainy day or after dinner.

Or maybe a closet full of them like in The Royal Tenenbaums. Swoon.

While your family may be perfectly happy playing that beat-up old box of Pictionary summer after summer, consider adding some new and still completely awesome board games into the mix. We got our friend Randal, owner of Toronto’s Toy Space/board game expert extraordinaire to talk about his must-have games. Here are his top five.  Read more...

Kids’ lemonade stands are facing the wrath of health inspectors, we say do them anyway

Remember how important you felt running your own lemonade stand – nay, lemonade business – as a youngster? That old folding table in the garage became your very own “store” where you peddled your wares: fresh-squeezed lemonade, or maybe just some grape Kool-Aid.

Sadly, times have changed, and running a lemonade stand is no longer the innocent money-making endeavour it once was. No, pouring your friends cold drinks out of a plastic pitcher for 50 cents a cup is illegal. At least according to bylaw officials in Port Coquitlam, Vancouver. As this National Post article reports, 12-year-olds Mackenzie and Alex were selling lemonade, popcorn and homemade dog treats to raise funds for Mackenzie’s soccer team until some presumably bitter lady with nothing better to do reported them to city officials. The poor little dudes had to dismantle their stand because (and remember, we are not making this up) they were running it without a business licence. Ridic.  Read more...

Give summer a proper sendoff with a neighbourhood bike parade

At Camp Bunchland, we believe summer should end with a bang, not with a whimper. Rather than focus on the fact that days are getting shorter and Labour Day is looming, commit to squeezing every last drop out of the season while you still can.

One way to accomplish this is rounding up a ragtag group of kiddie cyclists on your block and having a bike parade! The fun lies in decking your bikes out to the nines and creating a mini-spectacle for your neighbours for an hour or so.

Choose a parade route

Temporarily designate a strip of road as a “no-car zone” using sidewalk chalk, streamers strung between lamp posts and/or balloons. You could even spray paint the road in wild colours using a temporary product like Krylon Marking Chalk. A pair of grownups can be stationed at the start and end points of the route to ensure safe parading.  Read more...

The best sprinklers and a cool DIY sprinkler project

For those of us not lucky enough to have pools growing up, the best way to cool off during the dog days of summer was the humble lawn sprinkler. You’d hook it up to a hose and take turns leaping through its oscillating streams. Eventually some of us would graduate to Slip N’ Slides, which was essentially a long piece of plastic that we would cruise down on our bellies.

We’ve noticed this mind-blowing DIY project making the rounds in the blogosphere, and if the idea of building your own sprinkler sounds expensive and time-consuming, what if we told you all you need is an hour and a few bucks? Photographer Camille constructed this free-standing water sprinkler with PVC pipe and a few tools. The structure became  a neighbourhood attraction drawing kids from near and far to take turns riding their bikes and trikes through it (just like a car wash). She snapped photos for her blog. The how-to is right here on Instructables. Oh, and what do you know, here’s a video of the making-of, with sweet helmet cam footage.  Read more...

There are two schools of thought when it comes to sandcastle-building, that time-honoured beach pastime of molding wet sand into attractive shapes. The first, commonly held by those who enter the world’s sandcastle-building competitions, is that a castle must be a pristine work of architecture, the result of hours of detailed planning and an assortment of building tools schlepped to the beach.

See, this is cool but it also seems like a lot of work.

Then there is the second school of thought – the Bunchland school of thought –  that says, hello, building a sandcastle should be fun. And that means minimal equipment and pre-planning and hours of getting messy and wriggling your toes in the sand.

 Read more...

Take kids to an outdoor music festival for a summer experience you’ll never forget

Perry Farrell’s kids!

Bringing little ones along for a day (or two, or more) of watching bands play under a blue sky while lazing on the grass is no longer the domain of celebrity families. All-ages events can be found throughout North America and beyond, and often, bringing kids is encouraged with free admission for smalls and special kid stages and play areas.

Kidzapalooza is an area of Lollapalooza where kids and parents can hang out, watch bands play on the Kidza stage and take part in activities like hip hop workshops, getting punk-rock hairdos and rock star video karaoke. “The whole point of Kidzapalooza,” Lolla co-founder/music producer Tor Hyams told us over the phone from Los Angeles, “was that I wanted to figure out a way to get families together doing something musical, something the whole family could participate it.” (Hm, sounds just like the principle behind the infamous Bunch Family Dance Parties.)  Read more...