'U' is for Unicorns

This summer we've made the focus of our Alphabet Summer around magical and mythical creatures. Last year we hosted 10 craft camps for the neighborhood kids which was nearly one every week.  Because I've started taking care of a very busy one-year-old in addition to my two daughter to earn some additional income, I knew it would be too much to coordinate that many craft camps so I decided to offer once a month instead.  Our first camp had only two children and was all about Gnomes.

Yesterday we held our second craft camp of the summer by celebrating the letters U and P.  Unicorns were the magical and mythical creature of the day and because we had such a big crowd of 11 children, I hired one of my favorite 13-year-olds to help me out and was blessed to have one of the moms who stayed to help with the last three crafts of the day.

We kicked off the craft camp by learning about unicorns with a few books from the library. Then we learned The Unicorn Song written by Shel Silverstein and sung by The Irish Rovers.  Funny, because The Gnome, The Gnat, and The Gnu (not gnocchi I guess) was also written by Shel Silverstein who by the way has a really cool website. The kids played Pass the Unicorn with a unicorn Beanie Baby. The game was a cross between Hot Potato and musical chairs by using the Irish Rovers song.

We followed Pass the Unicorn with a delightful game of Pin the Horn on the Unicorn. I printed a picture of a unicorn I found on Google Images and blew it up to a poster size and glued it onto poster board.  Then colored the mane, tail, and hooves because we learned that unicorns are always white.

The winners of the game (and anyone else who wanted it) got to stick a piece of corn on their head and were called a "Unicorn on the Cob".  Sick, I know, but I thought it was funny. The kids thought it was a pretty lame prize.  I used a second blow up glued to poster board for the "Unicorn Hunt" game.  After I colored the poster, I cut it out into puzzle shapes and my 8 year old hid them around the living room. We were going to do it in the back yard but it was raining enough to build an arc at that time (HA!!! arc!).  When the children found all the pieces, they put the puzzle together. Pretty clever if I do say so myself.

Lunch was next on the agenda. We had Penne pasta with Parmesan cheese with peas, pears, and peaches.  Not all the kids got enough to eat so I made a pizza and a few had some pretzels.After lunch, the children made colored bookmarks I made with an image of a unicorn found on the web.  After they colored the unicorn, we laminated them.

Our craft camp was from 10 AM to 2 PM and I had contemplated having the kids watch The Last Unicorn but ruled it out because that movie is really...unusual, ok, just plain weird.  So we incorporated the two letters and watch UP! instead.  The rest of the day was divided up as play time outside, making a unicorn mask with a glittery horn, or watching Dora's Enchanted Forest.

Oh, I almost forgot. We made unicorn cupcakes.  After making a simple box cake poured into cupcake holders, the kids frosted the cupcakes, used 2 Skittles for the eyes, 2 white Good n' Plenty's for the ears, half a large marshmallow for the snout with 2 dots of black frosting, and a Bugle for the horn.  This was everyone's favorite craft.