It's been a while since I last posted! There has been so much going on that I rarely have time to myself and when I do, I just want to sleep, (thanks to babe #3 kicking it in utero!). I'm writing a different type of post today. This is dedicated to how we are spending our summer, so far!
Preschool ended for J in May and I thought we could have a fairly unstructured summer. I neglected changing works in the classroom and insisted on outside and playroom play. I quickly learned that my children do not handle an unstructured day very well at all! I noticed more tantrums, more arguments and more negativity with no set structure to our day. I needed to add something that would distinguish summer school from the typical school year. Someone suggested on Living Montessori Now (a blog that I follow) that they do a Summer Camp based on themes the children enjoyed learning about through out the school year. I decided to do the same! We began mid-June with a sea creature/ocean theme (my son's favorite!), but I didn't do much with the classroom. I just set-up our playroom in ocean-themed stations. Plus, we played outside with some of the ocean toys in the water table and pool. This, however, was not enough of a structure for my two! So, for our next theme, I set-up the classroom AND playroom with all things dinosaurs (another favorite of J and K!). For two weeks, we did nothing but talk about dinosaurs, do dinosaur work in our classroom, and took a field trip to the zoo to check out the Dinos Alive! exhibit. I made sure we had ample time per day in the classroom as well as a twice daily "group" time. Their behavior changed so much, which made this pregnant mama so excited!
I have posted pics of the things that we did and will try to describe them as well as I can!
This is a picture of the works that were in the classroom and the play scene in the playroom. Thanks to a boy with an obsession with dinosaurs, so we have tons of different types of dinosaurs from previous gift-giving occasions! I also checked out LOTS of dino books from our local library! We had dinosaur digs in beans and sand (we took our skeletons to the local pool and buried them in the sand area), upon finding the skeletal remains, we made a dinosaur mold using play-doh just and identified the remains as best we could using pictures; we matched dinosaurs to their corresponding color bowl or plate; we counted how many dinosaurs we could pick up with a set of tongs; we matched dinosaurs to their appropriate picture card and letter they start with; and we had a notebook and pencil so that my little paleontologists could keep a field journal of the dinosaurs they discovered in the classroom works. J and K had a blast and learned at the same time!
Coming Soon...
Star Wars Camp!
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