AN INTRODUCTORY DAY
Welcome to our “Adventures in Nature Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun themed activities all themed to exploring nature – rainforests, mountains, caves, volcanos and more! For our first day, we focused on (indoor) camping and setting up our week’s learning area!
INTRO
Like many intrepid adventurers, we too went “camping” during this nature exploration camp! We started off by asking our little ones to imagine that we’d be traveling to the great outdoors: visiting national parks, caves, mountains, and rainforests! Then we asked them what they thought they’d see and what they may need to camp out on our journey?
Like most of our at home camp weeks, we kicked off the week by easing into the topic. We started off with setting up the camp area by creating our very own make-believe natural world. Like all days, we added in some interesting books and some writing / storytelling prompts to keep them learning! Read on to check out the fun!
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week!
After we introduced the topic, we gathered a few upcycled (paper grocery bags) and some green, red, yellow, and orange tissue to create a few trees, mountains, and volcanoes around our learning space! Then we brought out some of our indoor and pretend-play camping supplies (many of which were used in our Indoor Camping Party) and set those up as well! The tent and ‘tree stump’ area doubled as a reading nook for the little ones 😉
For some of our other intro days, we also had the kids practice writing their names onto name tags. It’s a bit silly as we – of course – already know their names, but it’s a fun way to get them to practice writing their name & excited about the day as they decorated their tags. For this day, we decided to use some index cards for the name practice because we found this paint-your-own placeholder campers at Michaels! In addition to writing their names & decorating their card, they also got to paint their wooden campers. 🙂
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:
- The Cat In the Hat Knows A Lot About Camping
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 created “campfires” with pretzels and cheese (though we had Cheetos as a backup). We also surrounded the logs with some ‘rocks’ (cherries).
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!
- Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping by Peggy Parish
- The Three Little Pigs Go Camping (After Happily Ever After) by Tony Bradman
- The Boxcar Children: A Camp-out Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner
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: NATURE, EXPORATION, CAMPING
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 but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- Imagine you are camping in nature. What do you like about it? What do you not like?
- If you could go anywhere on your adventure in nature, where would you go and why?
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 Nature-Themed Day, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
