Camping in the Classroom

Hello Friends! Well… End of the school year season is here for most of us! In my district we are out in eighteen days. I also am getting married in a month, so I think I am feeling the end of the year craziness x20 right now! How are you feeling about the end of the year?

One of my favorite parts about the end of the year, is we often have a little bit more time with the kids.

Last week, my students and I celebrated goals they have met and the teamwork happening in our classroom by creating a camp. They named it “Camp Kindness.” We continued instruction toward our learning targets, but I put a camping twist on what we did and turned our classroom into a campground. A few students donated small tents and made signs. It was one of the most precious experiences I have shared with my second graders! It was amazing to see their imaginations come alive in ways I never could have predicted. I truly felt like a 7 year-old again myself.

Campground Features: (It sets up pretty quickly)

1.     3 small tents

2.     A inflatable pool that served as a lake

3.     A paper-made fire for the floor and a youtube video fire for the smartboard

4.     Flashlights

5.     Stars on the ceiling

6.     Camp Mailbox

7.     Camp Signs

8.   Boat

Camp Activities:

-Read Under the Stars

-Class Meeting Around Campfire

-Camp Handshake

-Reading Hike- Hike and find a cozy place to read! Share what you found in nature

-Campfire songs

-Writing Campfire Stories

-Camping Poems

-Camping Read Alouds

-Writing Letters to Home

 Reading Letters from Home and Staff- I invited all of the parents and staff to write to us. I put them in our camp mailbox and we read them aloud each day.

Fishing for math problems- I used the “lake” with a math group. I attached string and magnet to a wooden stick. Then, I attached paperclips to math problems on a small square of paper. The students took turns fishing out the problem and solving it together on whiteboards.

 S’more Words: I gave the students two squares of tan paper, one square of dark brown paper, and one long piece of white paper. They assembled it like a s’more. They folded the white paper into 4 or 5 squares so it stretched like an accordion. As they read, they recorded interesting words and their meaning on the stretchy marshmallow. 

I hope you have a great week!