Material Required to Make Camp Box: a yard or two of green crape paper for grass and foliage of trees, two or three clothes-pins to make tree-trunks, a sheet of silver paper or a cheap ten-cent mirror to form a “lake,” the halves of shallow letter-paper boxes to make tents, and any pebbles, moss, or shells you have among your treasures.

It is great fun to make a Mirror Lake Camp—almost as much fun as being in a real camp! Mirror Lake Camp may be made on the play-room floor.

First, if you have some green crape paper, lay it flat on the floor. This is the grass.

Next, if you have some silver paper, cut out a circle of it, and paste it to the crape paper to form a lake. Instead of the silver paper, you may substitute a cheap mirror. Place this under the crape paper and cut out a circle above it.

You will need a grove of trees near the shore of your lake. These trees are made by standing some clothes-pins on end with forks in the air. Cut some green paper and press it in between the forks. It makes the foliage of trees.

The tents are made from the half of a shallow white box like a letter-paper box. To make a tent, cut through each long side rim of your box as far as the top or bottom of the cover, as the case may be. Bend the box downward to each side of this cutting, making a tent roof, slanting to each side downward. (For cutting a tent, see Diagram Three, E, page 171.)

You may have as many tents in your camp as you like. Perhaps your tin soldiers might like an encampment on the shores of Mirror Lake. Small oblong box covers will make smaller tents for these. When it is summer, maybe it would be nice, on some warm, sunny day, to take the tents outdoors under the trees on the lawn and make a really true camp on the really true grass, with real growing things for trees in a woods. Perhaps so!

Cut bits of twigs and use these for trees. Pebbles will help to make a rocky shore for a real water lake that is a shallow pie-plate filled with water. Its sides should be covered with moss or short grass. Of course, after playing out-of-doors with the camp buildings, you will have to pick them up, when playtime is over, for the cardboard tents will be spoiled if you let them stay out over night. I know it because I tried it! I had a really darling little doll and I let her stay out in a tent after my play was finished. It rained in the night and she was all spoiled—and I had to make a new tent, too. I think you’ll like to know about this so you won’t try it. It really is better to pick up after play, I think!