Keep it Simple... you'll be amazed

After a weekend on an island (this sounds like a bigger story than it actually was....) with 10 adults and 11 kids, we realized how excellent it is NOT to have much for toys and to see what the kids come up with for entertainment. Of course I'd love for KidsTravelHappy to be able to take credit for supplying all (or at least SOME) of the unplugged entertainment for the kids, but nature and seemingly mundane tasks did that for us.

We were amazed at the kids dedication and focus on sawing wood for the fire (with adult supervision of course) - not only was this entertaining, but very purposeful, as the weather was chilly and we used the fire to cook and to gather for warmth and conversation.
A little background.... we were on an island on a lake in Western Maine called Mooselookmeguntic (after some research, we find that the interesting name "Mooselookmeguntic" is said to have come from an ancient Abanaki word, meaning 'portage to the moose feeding place, or moose feeding among the trees.") Ironically, we did see a moose just before we arrived at the lake. The moose had nearly missed a fatal crash with a pickup truck one vehicle ahead of us!

In order to camp on Students Island, one has to paddle a canoe (or other craft) to the island, and transport all the stuff one might want for the extent of time one is there, in our case this was 3 days/2 nights. For us it meant two trips "from the mainland" (an adventure in itself), one with some things, and the kids, the second with the dog and the rest of the supplies, very little of which was toys.
What else did we do? Hike, swim (despite the chilly days), nature walks (older kids guided the younger teaching about trees, mushrooms and more), roast dinner on the fire, run (run, run), play games with 'sticks and stones' (and NO broken bones!).... It makes me happy to see kids do SO much with so little - no beeps, electronics, battery toys, etc. just plain old fun; more like what I remember doing with my friends growing up. Best of all, I'd like to think that the kids will take these memories with them into adulthood. And, with 3 dogs in our group, even they wore each other out (note photo of our black lab mix above, asleep....)