Alex and Steph's Presidents' Week Camp: Day Three (Scroll down for photos!)

Hi All,

Day Three of camp was a fun and education-filled day! We were busy bees all day long as we kept the children constantly engaged with an array of activities.

After "Free Play" and "Morning Meeting", which we concluded by reading a favorite of all our friends, The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, we transitioned to "Morning Movement" where we "shook our sillies out" and played dance games such as freeze dance, copy cat (where one of our friends does a dance move and we all copy the move as a group-took turns till all our friends busted a move :), and "Stephanie Says".

Then it was time to put our chef hats on and try our hand at our daily cooking class. Today we made personal mini pizza. Each child was given their own half of a multi grain slim sandwich bread from Trader Joe's. All children were also given their own cup filled with shredded mozzarella cheese (organic-part skim). Finally, we went around with organic tomato sauce and allowed each child to spoon out some sauce onto their "pizza dough". Some of our friends didn't want any sauce-only cheese-so they had grilled cheese instead of pizza.

We reminded our friends how healthy pizza can be for our growing bodies. We spoke about the whole grain and protein content. We also discussed the difference between whole wheat and white bread. We were so happy to hear how well versed all of the children are when it comes to health foods!

While our "Mid Morning Snack" baked in the oven, we decided to play with the dress up clothing and all adopt new identities. We then had another read aloud--this time Stellaluna which we read as a group; one of our friends, seen below dressed as a dragon, proudly shared this wonderful text with her friends. All the friends were very interested in this book--I would suggest to add it to your home libraries.

We practiced our numbers, in both English and French, before doing some arts and crafts--we played with colored foam (everyone loved this and it never dries out) and with the glitter play dough we made the day before.

After a relatively successful "Quiet Time" we had yet another read aloud to introduce our science project.

Stephanie read The Snowy Day (a great classic that some of our friends recognized) while Alex prepped the back room for science. We appropriately made "snow" using a handy kit found on a wonderful website that has all types of children's science projects "Steve Spangler Science". The children were gaga for the faux snow. All our friends took turns measuring out the nonhazardous faux snow made out of polymers and water, and mixed the two together as we watched the snow come to life. We then became scientists as we observed the snow with almost all of our senses (we didn't taste the snow).

Outdoor time followed as we brought the snow outside to really play with it! The kids had a blast--who said we couldn't have a snow day in 50 degree February weather?!

After lunch, we had show and tell where a number of our friends did a great job sharing their personal items with the group.

We then had a final art project to complete: tracing our hands in air dry clay, so we would always remember how helpful our hands are at camp and in our lives-and so we will be able to look back and see the size of our hands in 2012.

PARENTS: We encourage you to pick up your child's clay hand--they were not dry by pick-up time--they're all still in the playroom.

After our last snack (leftover brown rice crispy squares--see yesterdays post for recipe) we had our final meeting and lastly, we handed back all the children's art work they completed over the previous days along with a note from us.

Roundtable Question
Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?

"A superhero that goes around helping people falling from buildings and has laser vision to see through walls." -Oscar
"Anakin" (from Star Wars) -Luca
"Buzz Lightyear" -Rory
"A lizard with eye beams" -Dino
"A hawk" -Finn
"Superman" -Eli
"A firefighter" -Axel

*We cannot stress enough how much fun we had with your children. They were a joy to interact with over the past couple of days and we hope to see everyone at some point in the future. We will keep you updated about any future camps/activities we're planning.

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