Create Your Own {Summer Camp} at Home!

By
Joanna Martin
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0

summer campThe last days of school are now behind us, the weather is warm, the days are long, and the kids are home and filled to the brim with summer fun expectations! Here we go! We can do this mamas! Last summer I wrote up a Summer Camp at Home plan for my two girls who at the time were four and two-years old. I wrote that plan because I forgot to sign my four year old up for any of the local summer camps and was desperately seeking some structure for our days without our preschool routine.

Early last June I found out we were expecting our third baby and by the end of the summer, I was so thankful to my past-self for figuring out a plan for our summer days that were sometimes filled with morning sickness and always filled with energetic kiddos. 

Well, this summer I now have a five-year-old, three-year-old, and 3-month-old! While I have signed my five-year-old up for a couple of camps this year, I decided to go ahead and formulate another Summer Camp at Home plan because with a new baby in the house we probably won’t be venturing out as much as past summers!

Theme Weeks

I am still doing theme weeks for our summer plan. Each week we will explore a different topic and I have gathered several crafts and activities associated with that theme. I have also rounded up book lists and media resources for each week as well! This year I have included field trip options for weekend adventures with our whole family.

Morning Baskets

Something that I am attempting to try out this year is the concept of a “morning basket.” I plan to keep our weekly books in this basket along with a couple of puzzles, magazines, and some coloring sheets. I’m hoping that this basket will help stave off the immediate inquiries for screen time first thing in the morning!

Here is our plan for the summer!

Summer Camp at Home 2019

Feel free to follow along with us on social media – I will be posting to my Instagram account (@cafedumartin) and using the hashtag #summercampathome2019

Summer Camp at Home 2019

WEEK 1 :: FOOD

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Food Group Sorting
  2. Tot Trays: Food patterns
  3. Meal planning & grocery shopping
  4. 5 food group sorting
  5. Placemat play-doh mat

MEDIA : 

  • Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, S02 E06
  • Bubble Guppies, S01 E06
  • Bubble Guppies, S03 E025
  • (APP) Storybots: Food Into Energy, Veggie Boogies Songs / Biggest Pizza Ever Book
  • (APP) Peekaboo Fridge

BOOKS :

  • If you Give a Mouse a Cookie
  • Dragons Love Tacos
  • The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food
  • The Fruits We Eat
  • Gregory the Terrible Eater
  • Little Pea

MOVIE(S) :

  • Ratatouille
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

WEEK 2 :: SPORTS

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Little People Ski ramp
  2. Tape Shape Games/Races
  3. Baseball Lacing Cards
  4. Pool Noodle Baseball
  5. Olympic Ring Toss

MEDIA : 

  • American Ninja Warrior
  • Nickelodeon: Double Dare
  • Elmo’s World: Balls
  • (APP) ABC play

BOOKS :

  • Jabari Jumps
  • Players in Pigtails
  • Goodnight Baseball
  • Football with Dad
  • The Boy Who Never Gave Up

MOVIE(S) :

  • An American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars
  • Leap!
  • Sesame Street: Be a Good Sport

WEEK 3 :: STEM/ENGINEERING

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Grape Structures
  2. Cheerio Tower
  3. Teddy Bear Bridge Challenge
  4. Rain Cloud in a Jar
  5. Build and Measure

MEDIA : 

  • Odd Squad
  • Dot (Sprout)
  • SciGirls
  • (APP) Curious George Train Adventures

BOOKS :

  • Bedtime Math Books
  • Ada Twist Scientist
  • Rosie Revere Engineer
  • The Most Magnificent Thing
  • How to Code a Sand Castle

MOVIE(S) :

  • Meet The Robinsons
  • Robots
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

WEEK 4 :: SPACE

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Constellation Sensory Bag
  2. Space Memory Game
  3. Pipe Cleaner Constellations
  4. Play-doh Aliens
  5. Space Math

MEDIA : 

  • (APP) Storybots: Space + Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Songs & Rocket Ride Book
  • Bubble Guppies S01E07
  • (APP) Star Chart

BOOKS :

  • Roaring Rockets 
  • What’s out there? 
  • Astronaut Handbook 
  • Pete the Cat: Out of this World 
  • National Geographic: Little Kids First Big Book of Space

MOVIE(S) :

  • Wall-E
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins
  • Muppets from Space

WEEK 5 :: ANIMALS

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Invitation to play: build a zoo
  2. Animal Habitats sorting mats
  3. Land or water animal sorting
  4. Ocean Pollution Sensory Bin
  5. Farm Animal Washing Station

MEDIA : 

  • Wild Kratts
  • Nature Cat
  • Zoboomafoo
  • It’s a Big, Big World

BOOKS :

  • From Head to Toe
  • Giraffes Can’t Dance 
  • Zoo Looking 
  • A Day in the Life of a Zoo Keeper 
  • Starry Safari 

MOVIE(S) :

  • Jungle Book
  • Rio
  • Madagascar

WEEK 6 :: BUGS

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Play-doh bug fossils
  2. Build-a-bug
  3. Name Caterpillars
  4. Insect Sensory Bin
  5. Bug Jar Math

MEDIA : 

  • Beat Bugs
  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar
  • The Magic School Bus Gets Ants in it’s pants
  • The Magic School Bus Butterfly and the Bog Beast
  • The Magic School Bus in a Beehive
  • The Magic School Bus Spins a Web

BOOKS :

  • From Caterpillar to Butterfly 
  • Glasswings: A Butterfly’s Story
  • Diary of a Fly 
  • A Taste of Honey 
  • Army Ant Parade

MOVIE(S) :

  • A Bug’s Life
  • Bee Movie

WEEK 7 :: DINOSAURS

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Icy Dinosaur Excavation
  2. Magnatile Dinosaurs
  3. Letter Matching Excavation
  4. Dinosaur Easter Egg Hunt
  5. Fizzy Dinosaur Eggs

MEDIA : 

  • Dinosaur Train
  • Dino Dan
  • Bonehead Detectives of the Paleoworld

BOOKS :

  • I Dreamt I Was A Dinosaur
  • Oh My, Oh My, Oh Dinosaurs!
  • Dinosaur Woods
  • Dinosaurumpus!
  • The Super Hungry Dinosaur

MOVIE(S) :

  • The Good Dinosaur
  • Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
  • Dinosaur Train: What’s at the Center of the Earth?

WEEK 8 :: OCEAN

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Ocean Science Sensory Bottle
  2. Shell Cleaning Sensory Bin
  3. Under the Sea Lacing Cards
  4. Ocean Themed Play-doh
  5. Tropical Fish Matching Games

MEDIA : 

  • (APP) Storybots: Pirates and Mermaids and Ocean Commotion Books
  • Octonauts
  • Wild Kratts S04E01
  • Splash and Bubbles

BOOKS :

  • Over in the Ocean in a coral reef 
  • A House for Hermit Crab 
  • I’ll follow the moon 
  • National Geographic Kids: My First Big Book of the Ocean
  • Hark a Shark! 

MOVIE(S) :

  • Splash and Bubbles: One Big Ocean
  • Finding Nemo
  • Finding Dory

WEEK 9 :: ART&MUSIC

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Fireworks in a jar
  2. Frozen Paint
  3. Pool Noodle Painting
  4. Water Xylophone
  5. Music Games

MEDIA : 

  • (APP) Storybots: Orchestra Time Book
  • The Magic School Bus in the haunted house
  • Creative Galaxy

BOOKS :

  • Louise Loves Art 
  • Beautiful oops! 
  • I’m not just a scribble 
  • Little People, Big Dreams: Ella Fitzgerald 
  • Zin! Zin! Zin! a Violin 

MOVIE(S) :

  • Coco
  • The Music Man

WEEK 10 :: TRANSPORTATION&COMMUNITY HELPERS

CRAFTS :

ACTIVITIES :

  1. Exploring Vehicles and ramps
  2. Construction Play-doh
  3. Transportation Pattern Blocks
  4. Occupation Play-doh mats
  5. Community Helper Number Mazes

MEDIA : 

  • (APP) Tiggly Chef
  • (APP) Storybots: Professions
  • Daniel Tigers Neighborhood
  • Sesame Street

BOOKS :

  • Clotheline Clues to Jobs People do 
  • Whose Hands are these? 
  • Delivering your mail 
  • If I built a car

MOVIE(S) :

  • Cars
  • Thomas the Tank Engine
  • Ratatouille 

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