Summer Camp/Playgroup

I had all sorts of grandiose plans for summer, especially since it's Akiko's last summer before she embarks on her career in education for the next 13 years. Then I got pregnant and realized the baby is due smack in the middle of summer. I mean, I really wanted to put the kids in swim lessons, take them on all sorts of outings like the zoo or museum, etc. However, as any woman who's been with child could tell you, after the first trimester, the last month is the worst. Then, after the baby is born... well, it's hard to make plans that involve newborns. So, I had a hard time coming to terms with what to do with the summer.

Fortunately, in our ward there is a huge population of young mothers whose young children are the same age as mine. Last year, a bunch of them got together and did a summer camp where one mother would host a group of kids and do a bunch of themed activities, like luau, cowboys, space, etc. They decided to do it again this year since it ended up being a success and we got to be a part of it. I'm so glad because not only does it give my kids something to do, but I'll also get a break from them for a couple hours every week.

In my group, it was quickly decided that I would host the kids first since my due date is drawing uncomfortably close. I had the privilege to host the older kids twice this week. They included my wonderful Akiko, Sami, Haley and Gavin. I did a Noah's Ark/Animal theme and it ended up being a lot of fun.

I wasn't able to get any pictures of Monday's activities, unfortunately. As stated before, our camera is broken and we haven't yet been able to replace it. I actually traded phones with Joseph on Monday because his Android camera has better resolution than my phone and I would be able to email the pictures to myself immediately. For some reason though, I couldn't get the camera to work while we were doing our activities (even though it had been working fine for me the evening before when I was playing with it) and of course it started working fine after the kids left. So I don't have any pictures from Monday, which is okay, really, because all the fun stuff happened today anyway. Today, I took pictures with my phone and sent them via picture message to my email. They're kind of blurry and not very high resolution, but I think you'll get the idea.

So, on Monday, I started things out by telling the kids the story of Noah and the ark. I didn't really have to elaborate on anything since the kids pretty much knew it anyway, I really just wanted to throw in a quick Gospel lesson with the activities and give it a theme. After that, I had prepared some poster boards that featured animals that were endemic to each continent of the world.

We talked about flying squirrels from North America,

boa constrictors from South America,

hedgehogs from Europe,

African elephants (betcha can't guess where they're from),

giant pandas from Asia,

red kangaroos from Australia,

emperor penguins from Antarctica,

and blue whales from the oceans.

I learned a lot of cool features of each animal while putting things together and discussed them with the kids. They seemed pretty into it so I hope they learned something cool.

After the animal presentation, we played a couple games that involved animals. We played Animal Charades and Elephant Soccer (more on this one later). Since we only had a few minutes left before it was time to go, I taught (or attempted to teach) the Noah verse of "Follow the Prophet" and led them in a round of "Noah's Song" (if anyone went to Oakcrest Girls' Camp, you know which one it is: "Rise and shine and give God His glory, glory!")

So, Monday was a lot of fun, but I saved the really fun stuff for today's activities. Today we:

Decorated small paper bags with arks and foam animals.

Then we colored Noah's Ark themed sugar cookies with food coloring pens to fill said bags.

The kids really enjoyed this activity and couldn't wait to go home and show their moms and then eat their cookies.

After the craft project was over, we played a couple rounds of Animal Bingo (sorry, no pictures; wasn't thinking) then proceeded to play some Elephant Soccer, where the players push a ball around with just their noses. Yes, we did this on Monday, but the kids had so much fun that I decided we'd play it again today. I paired the kids into teams and had them do a relay race this time. We did it three times so that each kid was paired with everyone once. It was a blast!
Then we headed outside and played Animal Tag for a while (when "it" tags someone, they say an animal and the tagged person has to act like that animal until one of the free kids runs under their legs; more or less a variation of Freeze Tag).
Alas, the kids got hot and worn out pretty quickly (they were pretty worn out from Elephant Soccer in the first place), so we headed back inside, got a drink and tried to decide what to do for the next fifteen minutes until it was time to go home. The kids ended up making up a game called "Jaguars and Butterflies." It went like this: there were three girls and they just wanted to flit around the house like butterflies. Gavin wasn't really into that. He wanted to be a jaguar. Can you blame him? The girls decided that he was supposed to chase them. So, in a way it ended up still being kind of like Animal Tag.

Then Akiko switched sides and became and jaguar, too.

So, I think it was a pretty successful activity. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves and I enjoyed teaching and watching them.

While we were doing our thing today, Moses had the opportunity to go over to Haley's house with the other little kids where they got to go on a pirate treasure hunt, make a pirate flag and other pirate and princess activities. Because I was not the host of that activity, I cannot elaborate what went on, partly due to Moses' limited vocabulary and ability to tell me all that happened, but he did have fun, which really is what our summer camp/playgroup is all about.

I was going to host the little ones next week, with the same animal theme, but because my due date draws ever nearer and my back has been killing me lately, my day with the little ones has been traded until the end of July, at which time I will post those activities. Stay tuned....