Theme of the Week – Around the World in 80 Days


Around the World in 80 Days


  1. Set-up areas that represent different countries. If that seems like a lot of work for one specific day then “travel” to a different country or two each day. Try to have a food item or two that the campers can taste that are authentic, or close to authentic, to that country. Please no Vegemite.
  2. With a search on Google you can find games that kids play in other countries. As your campers visit each country, have the counselors lead traditional games from the “hosting country”.
  3. Music touches the soul and each country has a type of music that represents them. Get a CD or two of international tunes and play the appropriate music for each country. Head over to Amazon for world music. They even have some free samplers to download.
  4. Don’t forget the crafts. I found a site that has some great craft ideas for different countries. International Crafts
  5. Teach the campers some phrases in the language of the country your visiting. If the country you “traveled” to speaks English then have a contest where the campers try out their best accent using a specific phrase…Australia – “Let’s put another shrimp on the barbie.”

For more ideas see my post Around the World in 80 Days Theme Upgrade.


    • Yikes! I remember a camp I worked at that had a few Aussies and one of them had a jar of Vegemite. He insisted that we all try some. It was an experience. Not one I want to repeat. I’ll stick with peanut butter on my bread, thank you very much.

  • Create passports for the campers. They get them stamped when they visit a new country or activity. The campers who get a certain number of stamps get a prize. This way, if the event is kind of a free-for-all where the campers can go to whatever country/activity they want the passport will encourage them to do more of the activities, or visit more of the “countries”.

  • Have the children write to a pen-pal from the country they “visited”. Have different ways of getting to the country like flying to Africa, taking the train to Asia, and a boat to Europe.

  • Jennifer, you are talking about the one I wrote for the RecGuy site, right? That site got hacked and deleted. I wasn’t able to recover any of it. I was so upset. I don’t have copies of the posts from that site. Sorry.

Leave a Reply

Subscribe ToMy Email List


You're almost done. Please check your email.