Mother Hen's Summer Survival Guide: 12 Summer Themes
Thank you Crafting Chicks for providing these awesome resources for planning a great summer schedule for kids at home.
Thank you Crafting Chicks for providing these awesome resources for planning a great summer schedule for kids at home.
On to weeks 5 and 6!
Week 5 was a little hard for me to implement for a 5 and 4 year-old since their sense of directions and geography are not developed. However there are some great ideas for older kids on The Crafting Chicks website:
I took one of their ideas and made my own modifications to create a science lesson in map awareness. It was also free and in the backyard. This activity helps kids to understand how maps are made and make one of their own.
1. The first thing we did was make a legend. I explained to the kids how legends are symbols that represent everything in our backyard. So, we had to explore and observe everything in our yard and we picked a shape to represent that item. In our legends we drew the shape and then I wrote the word for them. I had to really help Rex with his map (call this an introduction to focus - HA).
2. Then we walked the perimeter of the yard and drew the symbols we needed.
3. Finally we filled in any additional items in the middle to complete our detailed map of the backyard.
Treasure Hunt: I then took it to the next level. I hid two pieces of candy in the backyard. I drew on Rex's map where the treasure was. He and Camilla had to follow the map to find the candy. The entire activity took about 30-45 minutes all outside and they learned a little science. This activity will also make a great rainy day activity to make a map of the living room or their bedroom and do a similar hunt.
Books At the library this week I found books about North Carolina: T is for Tarheel, and some non fiction about North America.
Week 6 Dinosaurs are easy and beloved. At our house there is no shortage in dinosaur toys. This is a great theme to pull together.
Books At the Kannapolis library, there are pre-bundled books on various topics ready for moms to pick up. I walked right in and grabbed one of the dinosaur bundles and walked back to the counter. Easy!
Movies Ice Age Two comes out next week - Perfect tie into your week of dinosaur projects.
Science Project I am going to do this before we see the movie Ice Age 2 about an asteroid hitting the earth so the kids understand better the theories in how the dinosaurs actually died.
1. I'm going to simple take an aluminum roasting pan and fill it with flour about 1 inch thick and sprinkle cocoa powder on top.
2. Then the kids need to find a collection of rocks ranging in sizes.
3. Starting with the smallest, I will drop the rock from up high into the pan so they can observe how the rock leaves a crater.
4. We will continue until we drop the largest rock, observing how the flour and cocoa changes each time the surface is hit with a rock.
This observation will help them to understand how rocks from outer space have created craters on the moon and the Earth and why the dinosaurs in the movie are scared of them.
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