the ultimate July 1st surprise

Thanks to a little creativity in the photo editing department I am able to show you a few pictures of the ultimate July 1st surprise- Camp-A-Palooza! But first, a little background info.


At my school, the 5/6 year old children do not take a nap mid day. These children from every classroom meet together for the nap period and have a class of their own that we call Extended Day. During the summer, the usual Extended Day teachers are off. I have been working with the extended day children all summer, but not in a classroom type setting, but more like a fun day camp type setting. The thought process was to kind of give them a "summer break" and so that everyone starts fresh on the same page in August. So far- it has been great. I have 14 kids, a fairly even group of girls and boys. On Monday's we have "Movie Monday". On Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend the whole time on team building. On Wednesdays and Fridays we do more arts and crafts or cooking type things- big projects. At the beginning of the summer, the kids each made me a wish list of things they thought would be fun to do. Almost every kids had camping on their list. I am not much of an outdoorsy type girl, but I knew I could pull this off on a much smaller scale- and thus, Camp-A-Palooza was born. My boss brought in a sub for my class that day and I was able to spend a whole day with the Extended Day.


I sent a letter to the parents, explaining what I needed for them to do, and that this had to remain TOP SECRET. I was waiting to see which kid would know first- and only 1 kids knew before hand, and she kept is a secret- which impressed me. (Her parents told her because she had the stomach bug and missed her class water day- and I guess by telling her about this- it made things better). The parent's mission was to pack the kids a bag and leave it in the front of the building AFTER they had dropped their kids off for the day. I gathered the bags and hid them in different areas of the school and wrote a scavenger list type note that led us to each one. I also made a scavenger hunt type list leading us to each child which we checked out of their rooms one at a time. The kids were funny trying to figure our which kid we needed to get based on the clue. After we got the kids, we started our mission to the bags. They were so funny saying things like "how did this get here" and "I have this bag at my house". Here is a pic of the kids getting the last bag- with the clue sending them to the surprise. If you heard a rumble where you were around 10:30 AM (CST) on July 1st- it was probably these kids freaking out when they saw a full sized tent in the library. Their screams were ear piercing. They were all thrilled.
We cooked our own lunch. I brought in the electric grill part of Mr. D.'s smoker.
We ate lunch, and they thought they were so cool because I got them orange soda from a can.
After lunch, we had water day. This consists of a few baby pools and a sprinkler. I spiced is up a bit with the POOL-O-RAMEN.
It is amazing what you can do with about $5 worth of Ramen noodles. They had a relay where they had to find things in the pool under the noodles. (On a side note, I was telling my cousin Kim about the pool-o-ramen and she asked what I did with the flavor packets. I said I saved them and when I made homemade soups in the fall, I planned to add them in as flavoring. She commented that saving the packets sounded just like something Granny would do....)

Let's see, where was I... Oh yes, we built a camp fire.
and made smores. If you like roasting marshmallows, or making smores, Target has these telescoping marshmallow roasting sticks in their dollar bin. I love them!! Thanks Tiffani for the tip!!
As you can see from this picture, things were a little messy and a whole lot of fun!!
After the smores were over and we changed from our bathing suits, we all got in the big indoor tent and told ghost stories. It was very funny hearing their versions of what is a scary story. Then we had popsicles and our day was over. It was a great day in the world of teaching!!

Special thanks to all that helped to make this day awesome!!