I started off our day by pretending the door to go outside to our camp space was stuck. I asked the kids to try some magic words they knew. G2 tried “abracadabra” - no luck! B7 tried “alohamora” - still stuck. It seemed like maybe the phrase I was hoping to get in response was unfamiliar to them, so I told them that we would all try “open, sesame!” together, which did the trick!

We read my (heavily edited) verion of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. I started with the original, which I got from Project Gutenberg, and read it through a few times to figure out exactly how much gruesome death and dismemberment was actually necessary for the story to make sense. You can read my version HERE, as long as you promise not to make fun of my ending!

When we finished the story, we talked about different ways to weigh items. Thye immediately came up with the digital scale they see at every doctor’s check-up, and even recognised that we weigh fruits and vegetables when we buy them at the grocery store. For our first activity, we used a fulcrum scale made out of a clothes hanger to weigh, well, anything we could find lying around! I had some 1/4 oz lead chip weights from my model airplane flying days lying around, but just called them “units” so it didn’t get too complex.

Next up, I gave them a treasure hunt to search for the hidden cave (aka, a box where I’d stashed the materials for the remaining activity). This was an enormous exercise in teamwork and patience for each of them! G2 and I eventually let G5 and B7 sort it out themselves and went back to the table to do some coloring, just checking in every once in a while to make sure they hadn’t gotten themselves turned around. After battling through the measurements for almost 45 minutes, they were so excited to find the treasure!

The treasure they found was some brown model magic, which everyone was very excited to see! We talked about a couple different ways we could make jars - pinch pots or snakes - and got to work! I realized too late that I’d unthinkingly changes “jars” to “barrels” in my version of the story, so this activity didn’t tie in quite as well as I’d’ve liked it to, but I just stuck to “jars” from there on out.

Unfortunately, we had to cut camp a bit short this day as there were other plans in the afternoon. Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey will have to wait for another day!