Summer Camp Outreach – Week #3

This week and next week are my last camp outreach programs for the summer.  I think overall, they’ve gone really well this year.  I’ve picked out some really great read alouds that have gotten some great response from the kids and the kids and counselors have really enjoyed our projects this summer.
This week for the 5 & 6 year olds, I read aloud a few books and they kept begging me to read another, which is great to hear!  So today, we started with Rhyming Dust Bunnies by Jan Thomas followed by The Big Mean Dust Bunny.  As a side note, I had to explain to the kids what dust bunnies were, a few wanted to know if they were alive and others seemed a little confused so I told them to go home and look where dust bunnies like to live the most – under the bed, dresser or sofa.  The kids had so much fun thinking of rhyming words with the dust bunnies.
After these two books, the kids wanted to hear more (and I’d like to point out that it was a small group today made up of 11 boys and 1 girl), so we read Chips and Salsa by Aaron Reynolds which the kids also liked!  And ended with Carnivores by Aaron Reynolds.  We talked about the difference between carnivores and vegetarians and I think the kids understood the story (which I personally love!).
For our activity, the kids made crazy glasses (which took up a lot of my time cutting them all out), but they enjoyed coloring them in and wearing them.  Overall, because it was a smaller group, I was able to sit and color with them as opposed to keeping track of everyone and watching over the project.  The crazy glasses took a lot of prep, I cut them out, and attached the arms before camp, but we had fun wearing them!
For the 7 & 8 year olds, I read the first chapter and a half of Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve and the kids seemed intrigued to find out what would happen next.  For their art project, we made art sculptures!  These sculptures were made out of box flaps for the cardboard, pieces of colored printing paper and I tried art paste for the first time.  I didn’t make a model, but did show the kids a picture of what they looked like.  And I was pleased to see a lot of kids were experimenting with different designs, rolling papers together, attaching flat papers to to the top and more.  It was a little more labor-intensive craft for the kids, but it made them work at being patient and working hard which I didn’t mind!