Waterfall Theme Park

Our friends Karl, Diane and Noah Hanf invited us to go camping at the Crawford Notch Campground (which, incidentally, is run by a homeschooling family) last September. They have found the perfect campsite, right on the Saco River with gorgeous views of the mountains. We had a great time there last year. We have already been there twice this year and there is one more weekend to go again this season.

It's the perfect place to go as families. We adults hung out doing grown-up things like gabbing, cooking and consuming adult beverages, while the kids played by themselves. This year they spent a lot of time playing on the little slope by the riverside. They were busy constructing something that came to be known as the Waterfall Theme Park.


It began as a little hole a few feet up the riverbank that the kids filled up with water and watched it overflow. Then the hole got deeper and got lined by stones to become a "pond". Then a canal got dug for the overflow to flow down through. Then they built a bridge over the canal. The kids spent countless hours working on this co-operative play, all by themselves with no fighting. We got invited several times to see important milestones -- e.g. when you could hear the sound of the waterfall. An unschooler's dream come true!