Camp Tonsafun Is Here to Save Your Summer

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We are delighted to partner with Comcast to introduce Portland families to all the fun to be had at Camp Tonsafun!

Camp Tonsafun is here to save your summer and make a mess of your kitchen… in the very best way possible. When our partners at Comcast reached out to tell me about Camp Tonsafun I thought it sounded cool, but my kids are so over online learning. Clearly I missed the camp part. Camp is fun! Before we get too far, this camp isn’t just for Xfinity customers. Everyone deserves camp, so participation is FREE to all and Comcast posts all the content to YouTube, too. It’s also not so much online learning as much as it is inspiration for offline doing!

Speaking of YouTube, my 10-year-old son has been watching a bit too much YouTube this summer. Once I previewed the Camp Tonsafun content, I was hooked, watching all of the videos with him; they’re short and got us both excited for some analog fun.

Camp Tonsafun is a series of campy videos demonstrating different activities that embody the nostalgic, simple summers of my childhood, now remastered for the COVID-19 era. Smaller kids can do the activities with a parent and big kids like mine can do them on their own. You can learn how to build your own obsticle course from an American Ninja Warrior, make a milkshake from Universal Studios, do magic tricks, and pull pranks on the family you’ve been quarantined with a little too long…

Camp Activities We Tried

Make a Mango Smoothie

Remember when it was super hot a few weeks ago? My kids love mangos, so we made the mango smoothie and it was a huge hit! I am learning with all of these ideas that helping my kids as little as possible is giving my them a sense of independence that they’ve been lacking spending so much time at home during COVID. Teaching them to clean up the kitchen when they’re done is a skill we’re still working on. For this one I bought fresh mangos so they had to cut them up and wait for them to freeze.

mango smoothies
Pranks

Son pranking family - Camp TonsafunMy son has been watching famous YouTubers prank each other all summer and dreaming of pulling some of his own pranks without getting in trouble. The Camp Tonsafun pranks are hilarious and kid-friendly. The best part is when we tried the soap prank and it backfired, leaving my little prankster spitting dish soap. This led to a great conversation about how kids used to get thier mouths washed out with soap for using curse words. There is nothing campier than telling 70’s parenting stories.

Camp Activities Next on Our List

Create an Obstacle Course

We are planning to change this one up by making it outside. I’m so excited to see the abandoned jump ropes and balance board put to good use. This video also gave me inspiration for creating an indoor course when the rain hits. We may need to leave it set up to run through between online learning tasks this fall. The under table bear crawl reminds me a lot of what spring distance-learning looked like at our house.

Make an Over-the-Top Milkshake

A chef from Toothsome Chocolate Emporium and Savory Feast Kitchen at Universal Studios shares the recipe for a confetti cake milkshake. This baby has a lot of sugar in it but I’m planning to buy my kids a confetti cake mix and all of the ingredients to make homemade buttercream frosting. The kitchen will likely be a mess but they will have earned that milkshake after baking all of the components.

Frankly, after surviving this summer, I felt like I deserve a cake-laden milkshake, too. I can always run the obsticle course to work it off.

Comcast customers: just say “Summer Camp” into your Xfinity voice remote to access the videos. 

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Katie
Katie moved to Portland from Chicago 5 years ago. She has a 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son as well as a 21-year-old stepdaughter. She is a freelance advertising producer, blogger, and avid school volunteer constantly adjusting to find balance. When she isn’t shuttling kids to sports or navigating college applications she can be found at one of Portland’s amazing coffee shops reading some YA fiction or out for a run contemplating life and why Portlanders don’t like to cross the river. You can follow Katie on Twitter and Instagram @iportlanded and read her occasional musings on her personal blog at Portlanded.net