Pagan Festivals and Kids

I'm just going to put it out there that if things were not so complicated this year, and if I'd known about it sooner, I'd've be pushing for us to go here:

http://www.ratatask.org/CampIdunna/index.html

This is how we used to run our big SpiralScouts camping trips when we were leading a group - long before we had kids, long before ventilators and pulse ox machines and tracheostomies.

Lots of activities - water play, crafts, hiking, outdoor skills. Lots of good food, and shared meals. Story telling, enjoying nature, and a community of families who came together for the weekend.

Don't get me wrong, these events were exhausting. We frequently had 50 or more campers to plan for across anywhere from 2 to 5 SpiralScouts Circles and Hearths. But we also split the work. We divided up who was responsible for which meal, each smaller group took on an activity for the whole group, and there were plenty of adults to work with smaller children on things at their level while the bigger ones worked on more advanced skills with other adults.

The kids were the focus, but the adults had fun all the same. Child care wasn't an issue, because the whole event was child oriented. Even for families with special needs, things could be situated to work - we took dietary restrictions into account when planning meals and snacks, we could be flexible as needed to work with a child's specific needs.

Last year it was clear to us that Acorn wasn't going to be successful right now in our local SpiralScouts group (or any other scouting type organization, actually). The debate of whether to do our own Hearth or whether to just wait and see if he was more ready in a year or two was won by exhaustion and apathy - we've done nothing this year, and have not decided about next year.

But sooner or later, I think we'll end up doing something. I just don't know what yet.