Welcome to our “Mythical Creature Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun themed activities all themed to oh-so-fascinating Mythical Creatures – Dragons, Unicorns, Mermaids, and More! For this day, we learned all about the mysterious Chupacabra!!! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all themed to the Chupacabra!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day is having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Some kids may or not be familiar with this mythical creature – the Chupacabra! If you need a bit of an intro, check out this article from kids.kiddle.co: El Chupacabra Facts for Kids or this article from wonderopolis.com: What is El Chupacabra. These are both great sites with kid-friendly facts, images, and related content! They’re perfect brief intros for your little ones!
Note: Many of the creatures we’ve learned about in our Mythical Creature Week(s) – dragons, unicorns, mermaids – have all been made very popular & kid-friendly by several cartoons and stories. The Chupacabra, however, is still one of those that may be a bit scarier for younger or squeamish ones, especially considering what the Chupacabra may actually be in real life. There are, though, a handful of kid-friendly Chupacabra books out there now, so we included this creature in our Mythical Creature exploration 🙂
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- What is El Chupacabra by Colossal Mysteries (4m)
- El Chupacabras, a Modern Mystery | Monstrum by Storied (6m)
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
For our food snack of the day, we followed suit with the “Don’t Eat Me Chupacabra” book by Kyle Sullivan and created some goat-shaped snacks. Our goats were pretty simple – we used some waffles for the head and sausage for the horns but you could definitely get very creative here. You could also create a goat cheese or goat milk snack as well 🙂
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned!
The first two are books we brought back from our intro day and revisited just the page on the Chupacabra in each book. The last one is part of the What Is Series & perfect for kids who love reading non-fiction!
- The Book of Mythical Beasts & Magical Creatures by Stephen Krensky. This is an excellent book filled with tons of information and pictures. There’s a page in here about El Chupacabra as well.
- The Book of Mythical Beasts & Magical Creatures by Stephen Krensky. This is an excellent book filled with tons of information and pictures. There’s a page in here about Chupacabra as well.
- Don’t Eat Me Chupacabra by Kyle Sullivan. This is an adorable board book for little kids with both English and Spanish text.
- ChupaCarter by George Lopez. This is a cute chapter book with a few illustrations.
- What Do We Know About the Chupacabra by Pam Pollack. This is part of the Who Is, Where Is, What Is series but isn’t going to be released until later in 2023. We’ve used similar books (like the Loch Ness Monster book in our Nessie Day). They are usually informative chapter books geared toward slightly older children but well worth a read!
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: MYTH, LEGEND, EL CHUPACABRA, GOATS
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day (and we offered up some examples as well) but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- If you met a Chupacabra, what yummy goodies would you offer this creature to satisfy its hunger?
- Imagine you were a Chupacabra and avoided humans to stay safe. What would a typical day be like for you? What about a vacation?
- Both the vampire and the chupacabra are said to love drinking blood – do you think they would be friends or compete with each other?
CREATE & CRAFT
If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!
For our crafts of the day, we gave them a few options that would help them enhance their pretend play or add in some of what they learned. Since no one has actually seen a chupacabra, most of our crafts centered around goats or imaginative interpretations of a chupacabra.
- Easy Goat Printable Template for Kids from craftplaylearn.com
- How to Make an Easy Goat by origami.me
- Create or draw your own Chupacabra using paint, markers, play doh, and other craft materials
STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES
While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!
Our science activity of the day was pretty open-ended: Design a method to search for the Chupacabra. We gave our kiddos some play doh, craft supplies, and other upcycles and asked them to design a prototype of a vehicle that could explore the lake or a tool that could find the Chupacabra OR to determine what the Chupacabra could really be. We asked them to incorporate any of the things they’ve learned throughout the day that would help them on their search!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home camp article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Mythical Creature Ideas, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
