Camping

 We had a lot of fun on our annual "camping" day during the last week of school. I set up a tent, river and wild animals around the room and the kids had fun doing different camping activities. 

Here are some of the things that we did this year: 

We went fishing . . .

I put paper clips on the fish mouth and magnets on the end of a string on a dowel.

We went on a bear hunt (and of course sang Dr. Jean's Cool Bear Hunt song) . . .

We roasted S'mores . . .

We star gazed . . .

I put glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. We turned out the lights and blocked out the windows to find stars. We looked for different colors, different sizes, shooting stars and practiced counting.

Our main lesson was focused on animal prints. . .

During free time, the kids had fun exploring different animal footprints using plastic animals and play dough. First they just pressed them in and looked at the features of the foot - toes, claws, shape, etc. Then, the kids tried to group the animals with similar feet - hoofs, clawed animals, etc. Next, the kids closed their eyes and I made a print and the kids had to identify what animal it came from. Last, we looked at pictures of real animals and their feet and the kids did a matching worksheet where they matched the animal print to the animal picture. 

All in all, a pretty fun day!