Welcome to our “Awesome Amphibians Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to amphibians: frogs, salamanders, newts, & more! For this day, we focused on both sensational salamanders! Read on to check out ideas on books, snacks, writing prompts, crafts, stem activities, & more!
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
Salamanders may be a bit more unfamiliar to some little ones compared to some other amphibians – like frogs!
- All About Super Salamanders from naturemuseum.org
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:
- Wildkratts: Fire Salamander S05E05
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 snack of the day, we loosely followed an activity that we found from modernmealmakeover.com: Salamander Dirt Cups. To save a bit of time, we used some pudding cups and just added our ‘salamanders’ 🙂
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!
- Life Cycles Salamanders by Robin Nelson
- The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer
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: AMPHIBIAN, SALAMANDER, LIFE CYCLE
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!
- Imagine you have just found a NEW salamander! Can you describe what the salamander looks like and where you found it? Draw a picture!
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 found a few salamander activities from zoos & organizations. We ended up coloring the spotted salamander one but all the others look great too!
- All About Super Salamanders from naturemuseum.org – This one is a link to a webpage with some facts, guiding questions, a video, and a packet filled with coloring pages, word searches, mazes, & more! It’s a great packet to keep the little ones busy & focused all on salamanders 🙂
- Spotted Salamander Printable Paper Craft from fishandboat.com
- Salamander Coloring Cutouts from www.nczoo.org
- Printable Fun Animal Friday Salamander Craft from online.sdcdm.org
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!
For our stem activity of the day, we found one of our favorite salamanders in a Lego Kit – Bruni from Frozen 2!!! Frozen + Salamanders, who can resist 🙂
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 Animal-Themed Ideas, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
