Contributed by:
Terri Lewis (6/8/07)We
did a Wizard of OZ theme in our ward this year. The OZ stood for
Our Zion. We had a yellow plastic runner that went throughout the
camp that led to each tent to represent the yellow brick road, we
purchased this at a Partyland store and you can buy it in a 100 ft
roll for $15.00. We had it set up before the girls got to the camp
and they loved it. We had the girls make flags to represent their
tents, such as the first years were "Glinda" and they made a wand
with puffy paint and glitter on the end of the wand. The girls were
very creative and even made one for the priesthood tent. (The
lion) We only have a three day camp and on each day, we had all of
the activities and awards centered around a specific trait from the
wizard of oz i.e. Knowledge, Courage and Love. For knowledge, we
had the YCL's plan a day of game shows. They played gospel family
feud and handed out smarties and dum dum suckers as the prizes.
They also played $10,000 Pyramid where the girls had to race against
the clock and each other. The categories were things such as Nephi,
Book of Mormon, Temple, the YW values etc. They also played a human
trivial pursuit game with big colored dice made of cardboard boxes
with the value colors on them. They then had to answer questions
concerning the value that the dice landed on. At the end of the
game day, each of the girls got a "diploma" to represent having
earned their knowledge for that day. On the second day we had
Courage day. Again the YCL's planned activities that they thought
would take "courage" for the girls to complete. They played Fear
Factor. They had a group of about 12 girls at a time in each
group. First they would show them all sorts of really gross things
that they were going to have to eat such as these fat worms and all
sorts of gross looking things. (They even made homemade throw up
from oatmeal and creamed corn and dehydrated carrots. YUCK) Then
they blindfolded the girls and made them think that they were going
to actually eat these things. They really had gummy worms that they
put in water first to make them slimy. It really took a lot of
courage for the girls to eat these things not knowing that they
really weren't the real things. They also had an obstacle course
that was really quite difficult. They had big logs that they had to
crawl over and things that they had to crawl under and they even
made a ropes course. The fun part about this was that the girls had
to examine the course and then do it blindfolded while listening to
directions. Some of the girls listened and got through it pretty
well while others did not trust and would fall. Again this took a
lot of courage. Well at the end of that day they received badges of
courage that were placed around their necks. The girls were really
proud of themselves. On the last day they had the Love day. The
YCL's planned activities centered around love. They again split the
girls into 3 groups of 12 and then proceeded to make heart sucker
bouquets. They had found out ahead of time how many girls were in
each of the other camps including the leaders and "doorbell ditched"
each of the camps. We had 9 camps in our stake and so each group
got to deliver 3 bouquets. They loved this and so did the other
camps. They made a tag for each sucker that said, "Love from OZ".
The girls had so much fun "sneaking" into the other camps and
leaving the suckers. One of the other activities that the girls
really seemed to enjoy was that ahead of time, the YCL's all wrote
letters to the girls expressing to them what it was about each
specific girl that they loved and how much having them in our YW
meant to them. They took turns reading the letters out loud to the
girls and we had a few tears and some laughter too. The girls then
gave them their "love letters". I saw a bunch of girls put them in
the camp journals. At the end of the day, they each received a glow
in the dark heart necklace to wear, so that by the end of camp they
had all received their knowledge, courage and love awards. It
really was a great camp and the girls all seemed to really love it.