Thirteen years ago, I was a first year student on a university campus. One of the girls in my group was called Andrea. After our year together, we lost touch for a while. She moved to England, I moved to England, she moved to Canada, I stayed in England – we never even saw each other here: we didn’t know we were both living in London! It was really only when I became pregnant with Ameli that we got back in touch properly, beyond the ‘like’ button on Facebook. So, with that history, I am super excited to share this project with Andrea. It’s totally her brain child, and she’s done all the hard work: I’m just hosting her project for the next 12 weeks, and maybe from time to time I’ll regale you with our adaptations on her projects.
Without further ado, here’s Andrea, with Andrea’s Summer Camp At Home
Fear and dread. A.k.a 12 weeks of summer at home.
I recently realized with a shock that my son’s preschool graduation was drawing near, meaning the Summer holiday was imminent. A very long summer holiday. 12 weeks to be exact. Insert panic attack here!
If five years of being a mum have taught me anything, it’s that you need a plan. So I made one. I knew that if I didn’t have a plan for every day, we would end up spending the summer in our PJ’s watching a lot of movies with talking animals. No thank you!
I mentioned my plan in a Facebook status update, and the response from my Mommy friends was overwhelming, everyone wanted a piece of this magic. Luschka and I put our heads together and thought that there might be more people out there who needed a sanity saver, so Luschka graciously offered to let me visit on her blog for a few months.
A little bit more about me:
I am a SAH mom of two boys, ages 5 and 2.5, and I have a wonderful husband. I trained as a preschool teacher and hold a B.PrimEd degree. I have taught little kids in three different countries and I still do so on a volunteer basis. Working with children is truly a great joy, life is so different through their eyes!
What will we do?
Each week, we will post a plan with 3 crafts, a “field trip” activity, sensory play, and two cooking activities. These kids summer camp activities will all be centered around a theme, and you will see pictures with examples of what we did. We will link to other blogs and websites for recipes and more ideas and information. I will also provide a handy shopping list for the week ahead, that way you can make sure you have things on hand when the elementary age summer camp begins!
What do you do this week?
Get ready! Organize your craft supplies, make sure you have paint, markers, ingredients for playdough, glue, and scissors.
Another useful tip, when the new plan for the week is posted, take a few minutes and do your craft preparation for the week ahead. You will be glad you did!
Start saving the following “junk” items.
– clear plastic bottles (one for each child)
– milk cartons (one for each child)
– plastic drinking cups
– several different little boxes of various sizes
– loo rolls (or Kitchen paper rolls)
I am really looking forward to hanging out with all of you this summer! Let’s have some fun!
Just so you know, the holidays for Andrea are 12 weeks long. Yes, t.w.e.l.v.e weeks. Here in the UK they’re only about six weeks, so feel free to take your favourite themes, the ones that you find most adaptable and the ones that appeal to you most. There are no ‘rules’. Take what you want, use what you want, but mostly HAVE FUN WITH YOUR KIDS! The holidays don’t have to be dreaded!
If you participate and would like to share your projects on our weekly project wall, you can upload your photos to our Flickr album. They stay your photos, but will appear in our album. You can remove them at any time. We’d love to see how the projects inspire you, even if you just use it as a starting point!
If you’re a blogger and you want to participate, you can use this button to show you’re participating in Andrea’s Summer Camp At Home
