We love camping in the summertime, and I always get so excited to bring that theme to school for my students to enjoy. A camping room transformation in the classroom is super cheap and easy to do. Bring in your own lawn chairs, borrow a friends pop-up tent, grab some sticks outside, and buy that 96 cent bag of marshmallows at the store and you are golden! Here are our favorite books!
Froggy Goes to Camp
Froggy books are THE BEST! So many opportunities for language and communication and Froggy is just the best character. My students always enjoy these silly books.
The Night Before Summer Vacation
Most of our students can relate to the excitement of packing for a trip to go somewhere. This book is perfect for introducing lots of different vocabulary words for camping items. Students always get a giggle at the end when the family forgets to bring the dog!
Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night
Henry and Mudge books are another favorite in my classroom. My students always go crazy when we read “chapter books” Read this book by your classroom tent and pretend campfire!
Click to see my camping story time bundle to get all the activities shown in this post!
Pretend Play S’mores
I whipped these up for some pretend play fun during our camping unit and the kiddos loved them! They were great practice for when we made the real thing in class. I used an old amazon box for the cardboard, brown construction paper, and cotton balls. You can go over several basic math concepts with these (counting marshmallows, comparing amounts/sizes, addition/subtraction, prepositions).
Art and Writing Activities
My students always love learning about the different animals in a habitat. I use free books from Epic and videos from Brainpop and Youtube as quick mini-lessons when we learn about a new animal in the woodlands. Below are the animal crafts we do to go along with our camping theme.
We wrap up each animal mini-lesson with a craft and writing page to add to our “Forest Animal” books. Students are always so proud of their finished books at the end of a theme, and I love seeing them practice their reading skills for fun!
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