Today was the first day of mommy camp and the theme this week is camping! Lilly was excited to see the dramatic play area I created and spent about an hour straight playing pretend. She went on a bug hunt, "made" a fire, played pretend with the felt board camping scene and went "night exploring" with her flashlight. Arthur followed her around destroying things like a Godzilla baby but, they were easy to clean up and nothing was permanently damaged.

After dramatic play we decided it was time to learn something so we dove into the mommy camp lessons! Arthur was given pom pom balls, a child sized pair of tongs and two containers with which to practice his motor skills while we did a quick math and reading/spelling activity.

I got a great printable book from 2teachingmommies.com. It includes lot of cool pages that I will use this week. Today we used the roll and graph activity and we also did some writing practice with their tracing sheets as well as spelling practice with a sheet where you circle the correct first letter for the picture. I printed all of these sheets out and placed them in page protectors so we can use them again. Lilly really enjoyed the roll and graph which is great since we will be doing it in other units as well. I also laminated the dice so it will be more sturdy for future uses.

After the worksheets we talked about the word wall and discussed what the term "sight word" meant. We then sounded out and read each of the 6 sight words and then played an identification game where I laid them on the table in front of her and asked her to point at the one I said. It's amazing to me how kids love anything if you can make it a game and she had a great time. While we were learning Arthur had some free play time as the tong transfer only lasted about 10 seconds before there were 3 dozen pom poms on the floor. He really enjoys playing/demolishing our play kitchen and did that for the majority of the time when he wasn't eating.

Once we were ready for a lesson break I made a quick but impressive campfire snack. Where I took American cheese and cut the top portion into zigzags. I then placed the cheese in a bed of pretzel sticks and then surrounded that with grapes cut in half to represent stones. Lilly thought is was pretty great and actually ate the entire snack. That might not seem like much to other parents but she is a notoriously picky eater who will suddenly decide she no longer likes things that she used to devour like chicken nuggets. Yeah, that's her new "I don't like that." We're now down to lunchables, carrots, noodles, fruit and the occasional pb&j. Hopefully, my other adorable snacks will help that situation.

After our snack we went outside to play with edible mud! It was crazy easy to make. Simply mix one can of chocolate frosting with about 1.5 cups of flour. I may have added more because it still seemed too sticky so add it until you like the consistency. We played with it on our outdoor table and used some more pretzel sticks to make it extra fun.

After all the fun outside it was time for lunch, Arthur's nap, some quiet time for me and Lilly and a little fun with shaving cream paint in the bathtub for Lilly. After everyone was ready to have more fun we made microwave s'mores which is really easy. Simply take the graham cracker with chocolate and marshmallow and microwave it for 15-20 seconds. I recommend keeping an eye on your marshmallow while it cooks. Once you see it start to grow you should probably stop it so you don't end up with a marshmallow flavored microwave. It's actually pretty fun to watch so pick your kid up and let them take a look. I'm sure there's a science lesson there somewhere but we didn't discuss it today. Once you've microwaved it just put the other graham cracker on top and voila! Perfect s'more!

After our snack we had fun making marshmallow prints. Lilly used real paint while Arthur used yogurt paint. Yogurt paint is very easy. Just take plain or vanilla yogurt and add either a drop of food coloring or a little kool aid powder and mix. I used food coloring today. Arthur had a blast with the paint even though his marshmallow only lasted about 5 seconds. Lilly made some really beautiful prints and thoroughly enjoyed herself. After painting we had to take a bath because Arthur decided yogurt hair was a good idea. Maybe next time we'll do yogurt paint in the bathtub to prevent the disaster that was my dining room.

It was a really fun day and as I am typing this up I can't believe how much stuff we did! Hopefully you'll find a fun activity that you can do with your kids. Check back soon for the rest of the camping week activities. We'll be focusing on a few different things related to camping like fire safety, plants and nocturnal/diurnal animals.

Each week of my mommy camp plans has a theme. Week one is a camping theme. For each week I plan on creating a dramatic play area. These areas will vary from a store to space to a volcano so get excited about that because I will be showing you exactly how and what I do!

This week I set up an indoor campsite using a tent I made several years ago. It was an epic fail in that it was not easy, has some serious flaws in the looks department and is way too easy to knock down if the kid isn't careful. But, it does actually look pretty cute and is much more "camp" looking than our pop-up tent. I grabbed a few camping appropriate toys like binoculars, a magnifying glass, flashlight and bug jar and placed them inside the tent. I also hid bugs and lizards around the room for them to find and made a pretend campfire. You can see the tutorial for the campfire at my previous post.

In addition to the dramatic play area, I used a word strip holder taped to the wall to be our word wall. For each week I chose 9 words and 6 sight words for us to focus on. The 9 words relate to the theme. I got word strip cards from the dollar store and cut them in half for the vocabulary. For the sight words I found a site that offers a ton of free printable and printed and laminated their sight word pages. They are alphabetical and very colorful. 

I've created felt board manipulatives for each week by finding relevant images from varying locations on the internet including some free ones from teacherspayteachers. I print the images out, laminate them and hot glue a small amount of velcro to the back. I also made my felt board several years ago using a picture frame, black felt and hot glue. You'll have to excuse the dog hair. It's shedding season.

This week was a little more simple than my plans for future weeks but I think it turned out pretty well.

It only took me about 20 minutes to create and both kids think it is pretty great. Because I chose to make it from foam instead of paper like other tutorials I have seen, it is much more durable. My tiny 1.5 year old tornado grabbed it as soon as he saw it but it held it’s shape perfectly. Also, by leaving the orange portion unattached to the red and gold the kids can take it apart and put it back together which they enjoyed. The “logs” actually held up pretty well once I established that they were not for eating. I hope your kids enjoy this quick and easy pretend fire as much as mine do! Good luck!

As a teacher and a person who is slightly OCD, I decided to create lesson plans with thematic units for my kids while we are out for the summer. Knowing that my 4.5 year old should be learning vastly different things from my 1.5 year old I created a compilation of activities focused on teaching reading, writing, math and science to my older child, Lillian, and sensory, dexterity and word recognition for my younger child, Arthur. My goal is to both educate my kids about things that I think are cool and important but also to ensure that I don’t go crazy by having a plan.