Someday, I plan to sign my kids up for an actual summer camp.
Someday . . . but not this summer.
We were going to start summer camp this year. There’s a nature center near us with an amazing outdoor program. Unfortunately, they raised their age limits this year, and my youngest still isn’t older enough.
So, I told my kids we would do our own camp.
The plan is to start with a morning story time. Then we’ll pick a project or activity based on the story time. (Check out the kids activities section for other, similar projects!)
I don’t have any particular theme for the summer.
We’ll read a variety of library books. (My books-to-read stack needs some help, after all!)
DK Books’ Art And How It Works needs to go back to the library next week.
So, that’s the one we started with!
Today, we read the first 20 pages with information about lines, shapes, colors, and perspective. We also found a brief introduction to cave paintings.
My oldest loved the images with all of the hands, and the activity looked fairly easy. We would have used sidewalk chalk, but I have a set of chalk pastels in my art box.
We pulled those out and started playing around with them.
At first, my kids wanted to just outline their hands. I showed them how to lay the chalk flat on the paper. This creates a much broader stroke that makes it easier to fill in a large area.
Then both kids started smudge the chalk with their hands.
They got a bit carried away, I think!
Next week’s theme will probably be volcanoes. We borrowed Lori Griffin Burns’s Life on Surtsey from the library a couple weeks ago. Plus, we’ve been learning a lot about rocks this spring. Volcanoes and island formations will fit in well with that!
I don’t know how long we’ll keep this up, but today we’re off to a fun (and messy start)!
We’ll see how the rest of the summer goes . . . .
(And remember that you can always check out the kids activities section if you need ideas for keeping your kids busy!)
