Alex and Steph's Presidents' Week Camp: Day Two

Hi All,

We had another great day at camp. Our group, although a bit smaller (6 friends) was a lot more comfortable with each other today.

It's so impressive how the children so easily accept and embrace our routine. They seem to respond well to the "Camp Rules" chart - some even had the rules memorized.

We were really happy to see how well the children communicated with one another; they were able to "use their words to express their feelings" as one of the camp rules advises. It is a really beautiful thing to see children express themselves when they're having an issue with a friend. I was especially impressed with Oscar and Finn when they had a good five minute conversation sharing how they were feeling and how certain things are hurtful. By the end, they had successfully worked it out together with little grown-up guidance.

Today we made our own glitter play dough! It was very exciting as we took turns helping add the ingredients (see no-oven-required recipe below). To know they had made it themselves seemed to make them to enjoy it even more!

We also played with foam today and did an excellent job at sharing the different colors with one another. They were all very good at asking their friends if they could trade colors. Again, great use of sharing and using their words.

For our prepared snack of the day we made healthy rice crispy treats--everyone loved them.

We discussed the health benefits of brown rice. We also examined the ingredient used to make the rice crispy treats.

Our daily French lesson went well; the children are good listeners and eager to imitate the foreign sounds. We practiced our counting today.

Roundtable Questions:

Q: If you could be anywhere, where would you go?

"A museum"-Eli
"Jumping on my bed."-Oscar
"In a restaurant; Coco Loco."-Nina
"The zoo but the rhino isn't there because she is having an Indian rhino baby."-Dino
"Candyland!"-Finn
"In the castle with Beauty and the Beast."-Rory.

Q: What does daddy do during the day?

"He goes to work, he is a banker."-Oscar
"He works and makes magazines."-Finn
"He goes to work; he is a computer worker."-Nina
"He goes to work in the kitchen and makes Mac and cheese."-Dino
"He goes to the grocery store."- Rory
"He works at magazine. Martha Stuart."-Eli

Play Dough

3 c flour
1 1/2 c salt
1 c water
1/4 c oil
food coloring
glitter

Rice Crispy Treats (Healthified)

3 tablespoons butter
4 cups marshmallows
6 cups brown rice puffed cereal (or any other healthy cereal)

-melt butter on low heat, add marshmallows and stir until melted
-remove from heat and add cereal to pot; stir until all cereal is mixed with melted marshmallow
-grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper/foil and evenly place mix onto cookie sheet.
-cool for 10 minutes, then cut into squares.

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