It’s time for a summer girls-only party!
Looking for ideas for an at-home summer camp? Three years ago, we held our first Girlfriends Camp, a girls only, 4-day summer camp for all our favorite preteen girlfriends. This has turned out to be a wonderful tradition. We have moms calling us in February to find out the dates so they can plan their family vacations around the camp. It’s been a smashing success.
Not only do we have four sons, but we also live in a neighborhood with LOTS of boys. That means my daughter doesn’t get a lot of girl time. Neither do I for that matter! Don’t get me wrong. We love the boys so so much. But, it’s also fun to ignore them sometimes and hang out with our girlfriends. We love packing in some long summer afternoons with all-things-girl!
If you’d like to host your own Girlfriends Camp, here are some ideas that have worked well for us.
How many days makes a great camp?
We like holding our camp for 4 consecutive days. We usually plan it for a Tuesday-Friday from 1:00-5:00PM. It’s nice to have mornings to get everything ready and we also like avoiding meal times. Our camp is free. It’s just for fun, so we don’t want to add the work and expense of lunch to our agenda. Three or four days seems long enough that it’s a big deal for the participants. And, we can do a lot of fun things in that amount of time.
What should the schedule look like?
First Day
On the first day, make sure you begin by introducing all the girls to each other. Play a get-to-know-you game like tossing a bean bag around the room asking each person to answer a silly question. You can also ask each girl to come up with a “camp name” for the week. It could be as simple as an adjective that starts with the same letter as their first name. Think Crazy Claire, Sassy Sophie, or Gorgeous Gretta. This will help everyone feel a bit more comfortable before you dive into activities.
Daily Themes and Agendas
We choose a theme for each day of our camp and plan our activities accordingly. We include our agenda in the invitation we send to our guests. Click here for an example of an agenda: Girlfriends Camp Invitation
Each year, we have repeated three themes: baking day, art day, and swimming/movie day. On the last day, we’ve tried a different theme each year.
When you plan your own camp, make sure you allow for lots of free time to play. You don’t want to overschedule the camp. Be flexible. If you don’t get to one of your activities, don’t feel bad. Your goal is to build relationships and maybe teach a few things. If you only get two art projects done but the girls are laughing and having a great time… mission accomplished!
Here are some examples of daily agendas. You can mix and match however you like and add your own ideas. It’s pretty hard to mess it up.
Girlfriends in the Kitchen
We love to bake at our house so this one is a no-brainer for us. We’ve done a few different things for our Girlfriends in the Kitchen day.
The first year, I taught them how to make cinnamon rolls and pizza. We made the dough together. Half of the girls made bread dough for pizza crust and the other half made the cinnamon roll dough. They played while the dough was rising, then I pulled them to the kitchen in small groups to “decorate” their pizzas and make cinnamon rolls. Every girl took home a small pizza and a few rolls. This was fun but pretty intense as none of the girls had much experience with dough.
The last two years, we have made several types of baked treats. I made sure I had ingredients for 8 different kinds of cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and rice crispy treats. I let each group of 3 girls choose which recipe they wanted to make. The girls played in other parts of the house until their turn. Each threesome was able to choose and make their batter/dough with my supervision. One group in the kitchen at a time was very easy. We could usually pull a recipe together in 10 minutes. This was fun because we had lots of different kinds of tasty treats to share when we were finished.
The big finale to the baking day is a free snow cone and treat stand. The girls LOVE this! Every kid likes setting up a lemonade stand. A free snow cone stand is even better. While the girls take turns baking, they make signs and set up tables for their stand. I usually have the syrup and ice ready to go. We own a big snow cone machine.
We set out all the different desserts with signs and make a poster with all our snow cone syrup flavors. I text all the neighbors, church and school friends, and the girls’ parents in the morning so we have lots of customers. We only run the stand for the last 90 minutes of our camp so there’s not a lot of sitting around. The girls take turns doing different jobs. It’s so fun!
Girlfriends Get Creative
We’ve done a lot of art projects at Girlfriends Camp. We really like making camp t-shirts. One year we printed stencils from a Cricut machine and just painted yellow t-shirts. This year, we tie-dyed shirts (which you can see in the snow cone photo earlier in this post). When we’ve made shirts, we made our first day of camp the art day so the girls could wear the shirts on other days of camp. I kept all the shirts that first night so the paint could dry or I could finish the tie-dying process.
Other favorite art projects have included paper dolls and paper dresses, lots of painting projects, fairy houses made from small milk cartons and things found in nature (rocks, leaves, flowers, sticks), yarn frames, origami, and mixed-media portraits.
Girlfriends Take it Easy
This is the easiest day for the planners. We just go swimming at our community pool, then return to the house for a movie and popcorn. I have to recruit a couple of parents to help drive and chaperone at the pool. I let the girls swim as long as they want, usually 2-3 hours. Then we come home for a movie. Choose a fun girly movie that’s age appropriate. We recommend “Ella Enchanted” or one of the American Girl movies like “Grace Stirs it Up”. One year I had a teenage neighbor come create fancy hair-do’s for all the girls while they watched the movie. You may have to extend this day by an extra hour to have time for the movie.
Girlfriends Get Outdoorsy
We live close to a lot of great hiking trails so one of our days included a hike and campfire. I found another parent to help drive up to the trailhead. We went on our hike then found a firepit to roast s’mores. The girls loved having an outdoor adventure together.
Girlfriends Go Downtown
Once again, I recruited a couple of extra parents to help me on this day. We rode the train downtown, went to a free museum, played in the public fountains, and then divided into three teams for a photo scavenger hunt. Some of the girls had never ridden the train so they were excited about that. It was a really fun afternoon. Here’s our scavenger hunt if you need some inspiration. Girlfriends Camp Photo Scavenger Hunt
Girlfriends on Stage
I’m not sure I’ll repeat this one in the future but it was certainly fun. My daughter and I wrote a short play. She was 9 years old at the time and it was a great activity to do together. We gathered and created simple costumes and painted a couple of old sheets with background scenes. The girls all learned their parts in one afternoon. We invited their families to come at the end of the day and the girls performed for them. They filled large cups with popcorn and made little tickets to give to their families when they arrived. I’ll attach our script here as an example. Girlfriends Camp Skit
We hope these ideas help you plan something fun for all your favorite girls. Women need women. Girls need girls. We need lasting, strong relationships all throughout our lives. Anything you can do to promote friendship is well worth the effort!