Big Energy-Little Learners...Can I do it all?

I am going to do my best to follow and post a theme of activities each week to do during the summer.  These activities will include fun outdoor activities, crafts, reading/storytelling, and other learning ideas. It is important to keep the mind fresh during summer break so kids are ready for school when it is time to go back. I am not taking it too heavy on the learning side, I want summer to be a fun time for exploring and play.  I still want the kids to look forward to summer break. This is the first year I am trying a 'plan' during the summer.  I will be posting our activities here and other activities on my Facebook page  Big Energy Little Learners. I hope you get inspired! Here are activities for week 2: Week 2-SUPER HEROES The super hero theme was awesome!  It was very active and The Dragons loved that.  It seemed that it also made everybody feel special.  Each dragon was their own type of hero and they tried out bei...

I couldn't find a good art or craft activity for super heroes I searched Pintrest and asked social media to no avail. I do have to be grateful though because this is when I get creative. I had The Dragons separate into two groups for this craft because I wanted them to work in teams.  We have been having some selfish attitudes so I wanted to encourage team work. We had the older girls in one group and the boys in the other. My original plan was for this craft to correlate to the building your super hero craft.  As it goes though I am teaching preschoolers and their minds change, they get distracted, or they forget previous activities.   I explained we would be making torn paper art which means you don't use scissors. I asked them to make a superhero scene.  The heroes could be doing whatever they wanted and it could be any made up or real super hero. The boys chose Spider Man.  The girls chose Tigress and her friend who owned a big cat.  ...

Now that summer is here we had to try our capes out in an open field, so we took a long recess at the park.  We brought along a superhero ball to play catch We don't have the opportunity to play catch often, or I just don't think of playing catch much.  But today was a perfect day to be outside in the field with a ball. Little Dragon isn't great at catching yet, I should spend more time practicing that with him.  In the picture above the ball is coming at Little Dragon.  It looks like he has no idea.  One great thing about our recess was that it was great for pictures!  Big open spaces and the wind was blowing lightly which helped the capes fly in the air nicely.  We played tackle tag for awhile.  A form of football, whomever had the ball I would tackle.  Well, The Dragons did tackle me too if I was holding the ball. All the running around though is tiring, even for super heroes S...

While we were outside and the super heroes were free from their ice block prison it was time for a game.  This was a simple mind exercise, observation type game. I set all the super heroes up on a tray and had The Dragons look at them for a moment  Then asked... We took turns guessing and taking away the heroes.   Little Dragon loves being the conductor of the game.  He gets so excited when Doll Dragon and I guess which hero he took away.  Doll Dragon was bored of this game quickly.  It is below her challenge level. Then we played a different version of memory. With the heroes set up instead of taking one I asked... I switched the places of two heroes and The Dragons identified which heroes had been moved.  This was more enjoyable for Doll Dragon, especially when I moved more then two heroes.  She still didn't want to play more then a couple times though. Probably the theme.  Thanks for readi...

Aside from the super hero training this was one of my favorite activities to watch the kids do.  I knew this was going to be a fun activity and once the heroes were frozen I had a hard time waiting to do the activity. We had to wait a couple days because of rain but finally the weather was perfect for some outside fun. Now that my supers were trained it was their turn to save their favorite super hero friends.  Set up:  put the heroes in a container and fill it with water then place it in the freezer.  fill squirt guns with hot/warm water pull to frozen hero ice block out of the freezer  squirt the ice with the hot water or 'laser beams' as we called it to free the heroes We did this activity around the same time as Jerry's break so he was able to join in the super hero saving!  They tried standing up first then got down closer to the ice block for faster melting . Once the ice was looking thin Jerry picked up...

Before we composed our stories and before a super can be a hero they must first train! For training I set up an obstacle course.  Step 1:  For the first obstacle I set up two boxes, the second box a bit bigger then the first.  We called this jumping over cars.  Superheroes need to jump over many obstacles but cars was the first thing that came to mind.  Step 2: Two hula hoops were set up across from each other.  The point was to jump from one hoop into the second.  I moved the hoops according to the child's ability.  This was called jumping from building top to building top, which supers do in like every movie.  Step 3: I removed all of the spider web tape from the floor and rolled it up into 3 different 'sticky' balls.  I liked that they were still sticky because Little Dragon felt like spider man flinging his webs when throwing them.  Summer Dragon and Doll Dragon both gave the balls different power names. ...

As odd as it may seem this activity was not planned for the week.  I had some masks and didn't think we would have much time for decorating them.  I know preschoolers love to make things their own and decorate but for some reason it didn't think of it. After our photo shoot day The Dragons went to put on their costumes.  They were happy with their capes and masks, no complaints, but Doll Dragon went into detail about what her mask "actually" looked like.   Then it hit me-we should decorate our masks! I grabbed all the stickers I had, feathers, some markers and put them in a pile.  Because this wasn't planned I didn't have any super themed stickers.  The Dragons didn't care though.  They all had great ideas for their masks. Doll Dragon added some butterfly's and glittery stickers to her mask. Summer Dragon had a lot of glitter stickers and an animal sticker.  Little Dragon had all red sparkly letters.  I found it interest...

With our focus on super heroes we dressed up everyday as a super hero, even me. We all wore capes for all of our activities, even the activities that weren't about super heroes just to feel super. What was fun about this was The Dragons were ready to play pretend for all of their free time, they played out many movies and cartoons of their favorite super hero. It was also a lot of fun every morning when it was time to go to the basement they all ran to put on their masks and capes.  They looked forward to dressing up everyday.  I loved how they each had a name I had to call them by when their masks were down or their capes were on. To make the capes: I made the capes using silk fabric.  I cut out the standard cape shape, slimmer at the top wider at the bottom, then sewed a small hem around the bottom.  I used some extra fabric to make the tie.  I made a large fold at the top of the cap for the string to fit through.  You could also use a safety pi...

This week has been a busy, fun filled, super week of super heroes!  I have a little boy so of course we have super hero action figures/toys. We used these for our  For our small world we used a mat that came in the discovery pack from the library along with some tree's houses and cars.   The superheros were a bit bigger then the other miniatures but it made them look more super I thought.  We played out a couple different stories and destroyed the city in the process.  We set it up and knocked it down over and over again :).   The boy dragons enjoyed this cause and effect, saving and destroying the city.   Doll Dragon on the other hand was annoyed quickly with the constant knocking over of her house.  So she moved to an island as to not be disturbed.   The great thing about this is that it didn't cost me any money to put together.  I had the superheroes and the local library supplied the rest. ...

We started our super hero week today and started off with some creation. We did an activity that will set the stage for a couple other activities during the week.  A project, per say. We built Super Heroes!  To start this project we first had to talk about the super heroes that we know and love, what they do and why they are heroes.  This didn't take to long, we are a Marvel family and we love our super heroes. After we were familiar with superheroes we started creating. I found a print out on education.com   that was great for the first stepping stone Creating a costume I can see why creating a costume would come after creating your super hero, matching your costume to your powers.  I did talk to The Dragons about what powers they would want first, but they are young and after decorating their costumes changed their minds.  Therefore, matching the powers to the costume.  Either way could work.  When the costumes ...