summer activities
-
Flower Garden Supplies for the Classroom
One of the best things about a gardening theme is that supplies are generally easy to find. Authentic materials such as seed packets, gardening gloves, knee cushions, and planters are readily available and often inexpensive. Here are some of my favorite supplies for classroom gardening themes (all links are affiliates). Artificial Floral Stems Seed Starters and Mini Terracotta Pots Flower Garden Stacking Set Green Pipe Cleaners Kids Gardening Tool Set Paper Flowers and Leaves Glass Bud Vases
-
Flower Garden Theme Ideas for Preschool
Planting flowers and watching them grow is a natural activity for any gardening theme, but there are so many other amazing activities that can support learning about all things related to gardening. Some of these lend themselves better to the classroom environment than others. Here are my favorite ideas for exploring flower gardens with preschoolers. Look for flowers in children’s environments – walk around school, bring photos from home and other places that children go often Visit a garden center or nursery Identify different types of flowers Invite someone in to talk about gardening (a local homeowner with a beautiful garden, landscaper, staff from a botanical garden, florist, etc.) Ask…
-
Flower Garden Activities for Preschool
Gardening is not one of my natural talents – but I’ve always wished that it was! Growing flowers offers so many amazing learning experiences, from patience and discipline to life cycles and plant science. It’s a staple in the preschool classroom, for good reason! Since actually growing beautiful flowers isn’t a strength of mine, I’ve created a number of printable activities to support children’s learning and understanding when it comes to this particular theme. All of these are available in the Preschool Ponderings TPT store. Click on the image to learn more.
-
Ideas for Exploring Camping in the Classroom
One of my favorite things about camping as a learning theme is that there are so many ways for children to interact with the supplies, materials, and activities that are actually part of a real camping trip. It’s all very authentic, and even the youngest children appreciate that! It also lends itself well to spending a ton of time outside, which everyone wants after a long winter! Beyond setting up a dramatic play center, here are some ideas for helping children explore camping. Set up a tent. Tents are tons of fun to play in, but actually putting them up is where the learning happens – following directions, working together,…
-
Printable Camping Activities for Preschool
Camping is one of my favorite summer activities, so it makes perfect sense that I’ve always loved sharing this topic in the classroom too. Camping supplies lend themselves perfectly to math an language activities, and it’s so fun to find authentic materials to supplement these activities. Here are my favorite camping activities for the classroom – all of these are printable and available HERE!
-
End of the School Year Memories
The last couple of days of the school year always feel so hard to plan for – There isn’t really time to accomplish anything, and the learning has been accomplished, but you have to do something! I created this End of the Year Memory Book to give us something to work on together as we revisit all of the fun from the entire year. The great thing about this book is that it’s truly customizable. Each child can complete their own, or the class can do one together as a group with discussions about each prompt, Children can write or draw their answers, or do a combination of both. The…
-
Summer Family Night Activities
We lean into family nights HARD during the summer. Everything feels more relaxed and fun, so we take full advantage! If you’re looking for inspiration, here are some of our favorite family night activities. The great thing about many of these is that they can be a little spontaneous – which is really what makes summer fun!
-
Summer Learning Supplies for an 8 Year Old
Every year I’ve tweaked the supplies that I gather for summer learning. When my daughter was in Kindergarten we used a ton of crayons, glue, and flash cards (see how I organized all of that here), now that she’s almost done with second grade, there are so many more notebooks, pencils, and books. Here’s what we’re using to keep her on track academically this summer (all links are affiliates). In the past I’ve printed specific worksheets for certain themes. That worked for us, but it also used a lot of ink and paper, plus I had to organize all of it. The workbooks help us focus on specific subjects, and…
You May Also Like
Summer Camp Supplies
Cheap Summer Activities for Kids
Parenting Products on Amazon
-
Summer Planning; What Works and What Doesn’t
Over the last couple of years I’ve learned so much about planning and structuring our summer days at home (see the post that I shared on Monday for a round up of ideas and inspiration)! From planning our days down to the hour to throwing out the plans and winging it, I’ve tried it all. Here are some things that have worked really well for us (DO’s), followed by some things that haven’t been so helpful (DONT’s). DO DON’T The most important thing that I’ve found is to know your kids and plan for what they need. My summer planning has changed every year because my daughter has grown and…
-
Summer at home with kids
I’m getting ready for my third summer at home with my daughter – it’s coming so fast! Over the last couple of years I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to keep her busy and how much planning can and should go into preparing myself for all of that. I wanted to share how I’ve set up these plans so that you can get a little inspiration if this is something that you’re looking for a little support with. I’ve got a couple more posts planned for this week about specifically what has worked and what hasn’t worked for us, and what my plans look like for this year.…
