Summer Camp Outreach – Shrinky Dinks

This week at summer camp we made Shrinky Dinks!  If you’re unfamiliar with Shrinky Dinks you can get Shrinky Dink paper from Amazon.  It’s basically a sheet of plastic that can be decorated using colored pencils and shrinks when you put it in the oven (or in our case – a toaster oven).  This is such a great project to do with a large group of kids and it’s pretty inexpensive.  I was able to buy 10 sheets of Shrinky Dink paper that is 8″ x 10″ and then use a paper cutter to cut it into 2″ squares.  Which means I can get 200 squares out of one pack of paper. 

The kids love it too because they get to be creative and can draw whatever they want – Minecraft characters, rainbows, camp-related things, their names, etc.  I explain the project, hand out the Shrinky Dink paper, and add some colored pencils to the center of the table.  The kids then spend about 10 minutes decorating their Shrinky Dinks while I shrink them down as they finish them.  I can usually get about 9 in our toaster oven which means it doesn’t take too long to finish them all for the kids.  They finish shrinking in about a minute or two. Having an extra coloring sheet or something for the kids to do when they are finished is always useful as well!

Books

I also read out loud Chickens to the Rescue by John Himmelman which the 5-6 year olds absolutely loved!  I read Carnivores by Aaron Reynolds to the 7-8 year olds and I think most of them got it, but it was a little quieter than I expected.  But, both groups loved Stuck by Oliver Jeffers.  Especially the part when Floyd throws the ladder into the tree rather than climbing up it to get his kite un-stuck.

I have one more group of kids to meet with for summer camp this afternoon and then I can cross this outreach off my list for the summer!  The kids really loved all of our activities and I think they really liked the books I chose this year as well.