Camping Fun!

My favourite thing to do during the summer is go camping. I love sitting around a bonfire, curled up in a blanket, making s'mores. We've gone once so far this season and have many more trips planned! Many of my students have been talking about their camping trips already, so I thought it would be nice to end the year with a fun camping theme. Here's some of the fun books we have been reading...

We loved sitting around our "campfire" to listen to stories! We took a poll to see who had been camping before. Only 3 out of 21 students had never been camping before!

We finished up our Summer Math Centres, so I looked around and found some fabulous camping math activities to do during our last week and a half of school! {7 more days with kids!} Here's a peek at the activities we've been doing...

I fell in love with Cara's "Camping Capers" unit from The First Grade Parade. We have been doing a lot of the writing and science activities in it. I am also using a few of her math activities as stations. They are great review and a lot of fun for this time of the year. Here is a count and graph activity from her unit:

She also has this cute fishing for facts sort. I added paper clips and a dollar store fishing rod and *voila*! Best. centre. ever! {According to the kiddos!}

Another fun centre I found was this "Smores Roll and Graph" from Kelli over at Castles and Crayons. {And it's free!!}

Here's another freebie from Kelli.... "Marshmallow Measurement!" I think this is the second favourite centre, because they get to eat their marshmallows after! :)

Another fun {and free} review centre I found is this "Odd and Even Roast" from Hope at 2nd Grade Shenanigans. Hope has a whole unit of fun camping themed math centres.

Here's a quick and easy game of "Let's Go Camping" addition cover up from Ms. Arnold.

And lastly, here is another yummy s'more centre. "Doubles Plus One S'mores" from The Lesson Plan Diva.

Today we talked about animals that we would see camping and brainstormed a giant list. I'm not sure if we would want to camp where we could see bison or polar bears, but I guess it's possible! We also read a book about skunks and made a cute skunk head (from Cara's unit) that we will make into headbands tomorrow. I'll try and remember to snap a picture! They look really cute so far!

Combining our camping unit with our summer countdown, tomorrow is "T for Teddy Bear". I plan to do some fun sorting activities with the stuffed animals. We will also compare teddy bears to real bears. And we will write some stories about what would happen if our teddy bears were real. I can't wait to hear what kind of crazy adventures we would go on with our teddy bears :)

Click either picture to download. For the story page, I made a "teddy bear" page and a "stuffed animal" page. I know for a fact I have some giraffe and orca whale stuffies coming tomorrow!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer vacation or the last wee bits of school!