I am a huge fan of Laser Pegs, my kids each have sets and love them dearly. They have been great educational toys for my special needs child in terms of  team building, learning and just plain fun. To be honest, I may have too much fun with them myself. I am getting ahead of myself. Let me explain what Laser Pegs are, before I move on to my wonderful camping idea!

What are Laser Pegs?

Laser Pegs are educational and fun light up construction kits for children. The sets can be made into at least 4 different creations and when connected to the base, light up in a variety of colors. Game play is unlimited and open ended thanks to connector kits, play tables, light boards, even sound cubes and ABC building blocks. They are easy to connect, run with a very low voltage and the LED lights have a life span of 100,000 hours. Amazing right?

Here are just some of the benefits Laser Peg Construction Kits offer

•   Memory and Recall
•   Sorting and Classification
•   Cause and Effect
•   Fine Motor
•   Eye-Hand Coordination
•   Patience
•   Imagination/Pretend Play
•   Problem Solving
•   Precision
•   Creativity
•   Counting/Beginning Math
•   Color Recognition and Identification
•   Attention to Detail

Camping and Laser Pegs, what’s the connection?

Since my family loves Laser Pegs, we obviously play with them a lot. In addition to the use of battle maps and fairies, spaceships and monsters we also use them as very unique, always changing – night lights. They are perfect because they aren’t too bright and I don’t have to worry about anything catching on fire either. (My kids are notorious for hanging things over their lights for color changing sake)
That being said, with summer approaching we have talked about ideas for summer night fun. Of course there are bonfires, smores, camping and stories. There also is the fear of the dark. I am not a fan of leaving a flashlight on all night or letting the fire burn through the night. We live in Texas and since it doesn’t rain that much, I’d rather be safe than sorry. I tasked the kids to come up with some ideas by the weekend, but I think I have had the best one today. I checked out LPs website for new ideas since they have a lot of videos and pictures of other people’s creations when I came across their new MPS or Mobile Power Source. This opens up a whole new world for our stories and play worlds. It’s like a portable battery but will last much longer.

Plan for Camping

Set up the tent, have a small fire (burn ban dependent), make some smores, sing some songs, and then tell stories. Not just stories though. When it gets dark, let the fire die down, pull out the Laser Pegs and the MPS, and create as you tell the story or have it created ahead of time and just plug it in the MPS to light it up. You can change the props as you see fit while the story is ongoing. Everyone gets a turn or their own story, depending on how much time (and patience) you have. You could create small “insects” and put them in a jar. This way no real lightning bugs get hurt. If you don’t want to do that but have another creative moment, put tiny glow in the dark paint dots all over the inside of mason jars, add some swirls and glitter and super charge during the day. They look amazing at night.

Another good idea I had was necklaces. The MPS come as a pendant, which means I create some small figures and attach them to each kid. Then we can play Laser Tag in the dark. If nothing else it will just be cool to sit under a clear night sky in the dark and play with light up toys.

Since I can’t sleep with a lot of light, this may be my sleep saver for camping. Like most children, mine don’t care much for the dark. So my I am thinking since we use them as night lights at home, we could do the same while camping. They could each use their pendant as a bracelet and snuggle up in their sleeping bag. That way they have light and I have dark. We all win.

Tonight I ran the idea by my kids, and they just loved the idea of catching alien bugs, playing Laser Tag and create colorfully lit stories in the wild. In fact they loved it so much, that they made me set up the Star Wars tent in my bedroom. So we played indoor camping. We put glow in the dark stars on the wall made it absolutely dark in the room, sang a few songs and then the girls started the Laser Peg storytelling. It was about a fairy princess, a knight and a dragon… in space.. yes in space lol. They created their character as they took turns in their story. Lucky for ya’ll I took plenty of pictures! Check out the slideshow for those 😀

So… if you want to have this kind of fun head over to Laser Pegs or their facebook page. If you do tell them I sent you! Their website has some awesome videos too and if that isn’t enough, they are special needs advocates too. Check out some of their contests on their facebook page!

Please, share this with your friends and family, tweet it, fb it, g+ it and like! I really love this toy and the special needs engagement of this company!

So my final question to you… Will you join us?