Mini Camp Carnival

By Amanda Bailey & Kristin Marie Bivens Ozark, IL

According to the American Camp Association, there are approximately 11 million campers who attend day and overnight summer camps each year. Recently, Camp Ondessonk expanded their capacity and in the process, the ability to host more of a certain age group of those 11 million campers: the 8-10 year old Mini Campers.

By expanding the Monsignor John T. Fournie Mini Camp Village from Aonnetta (for girls) and Chiwatenhwa (for boys) to now include Tekakwitha, Camp Ondessonk now hopes to host more than the average 80 mini campers per session from summer 2017. In fact, Mini Camp is projected to grow from 655 (2017) to 718 campers in 2018.

“While mini campers are here, they find the courage to overcome their fears, such as being away from home. What’s important about mini camp, is that they learn and grow through the camp experience at a very young age, and they have fun while they do it.”
                                                                                                  –Aonnetta Unit Leader, Sarah Dennis

Today, while the older campers prepared for and embarked on their journeys to their respective overnight locations, the Mini Campers were treated to a carnival in the closed archery range.

Games and other fun activities included finding the duck in the muck. The muck included leaves, twigs, and mud where rubber yellow ducks were buried.

Another game invited Mini Campers to smash the mash. The mash included lunches’ leftover sweet potatoes and provided an opportunity for campers to smash the sweet potatoes with their feet in a brute tub.

Campers could also ride the slip and slide, which consisted of a wet tarp placed at the top of a small slope and ended with some fun mud at the bottom.

You can listen to a snippet of some of the sounds recorded from session I’s Mini Camp carnival on Camp Ondessonk Sounds (hosted by SoundCloud):