Kidz Kamp wk. 6

Weather/Seasons Theme

When the kids first came in, we made a brown hand print to use later. We then read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and went over some facts. We learned the sun is in fact bigger than Earth. That tiny dot Brittany is pointing to is Earth in relation to the sun!

We talked about how the Earth tilts on its axis as it orbits around the sun, which is what causes the seasons to change. We also learned about temperature and what it means when the temperature rises or falls.We then talked about Winter and hibernation while we cut out snowflakes. If you buy scissors, don't buy cute ones. I bought 5 animal ones and they can't cut through more than one sheet of paper at a time. We ended up having to bust out fancy scissors as well as take turns.

Spring time, when many flowers grow and baby animal's are born! We played a flower dice game. This is a great quick and easy family game. Roll two dice and either add or subtract the two to get your answer. Color in the petal which has that answer on it. Whoever gets their flower colored in first is the winner! This team just rolled a 12 and are coloring in the center of the flower with the number 12 on it. You can easily draw up one of these yourself.

We also had a couple of weather experiments we did. We held a pan of ice over a pan of boiling water and made rain. The pan of ice is a cool cloud. The heat from the Earth rises to the clouds making them grey and full of moisture...then it rains. We also talked about thunderstorms and how they form when warm wet air meets cool dry air and they fight and push each other around making thunder. During some thunderstorms, a tornado can occur if the warm air and cool air chase each other around in circles forming a funnel. We made a tornado using pop bottles.

It was Summer Snack Time! We made homemade ziploc bag ice cream while we talked about Summer facts. This is so quick, easy and yummy! Put 1.5 T Sugar, 1/4 t Vanilla, 1/2 c Milk (or half and half) into a small bag and seal (you can double the recipe and it will still fit in small bag). Put small bag (no more than two) inside of a gallon size bag of ice and rock salt. Shake if for 7-10 mins until it firms up. The gallon bag gets really cold so I had to wrap a hand towel around it.You can also put a bag inside a round container filled with ice and then roll it. It worked fine with only one serving in the small bag, but if there were two servings in a bag, there was not enough room for enough ice inside the small coffee container, so it didn't really get real firm. A bigger container would work better. Condensation will occur so you will have to dry your floor afterward or do it outside!

It was then time for Fall. Animals prepare for hibernation by gathering a lot of food and the leaves change colors and start to fall. We glued colored leaves on our hand print tree (thank you SSS Me Books for this fall idea!). I will have my kids write down their favorite summer activities onto the leaves so we can remember them before they blow away for the fall.

Busy busy day! We started a little late and scissors not working made things take a little more time than planned! Still a good day but this theme really could have used another 30 minutes since it was so much information. We didn't even get to learn our super cheesey song this week. Bummer!