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Our last week of camp flew by! We had so much fun in our final week together. Throughout the week we read folktales from around the world. On Monday we read How The Zebra Got Its Stripes from Namibia and used watercolors to paint illustrations of the different animals we heard described in the story. Later in the week we read Momotaro, the story of a Japanese boy who came from a peach and defeated some mean ogres. We looked at different illustrations of the story and noticed how different artists chose to show the story. We also learned a fun song to sing about Momotaro-San! Outdoors we enjoyed some cooler weather. Along with lots of tree climbing, tag, and mud making we also had several witches brewing up some potions with eyeballs (acorns) and other witchy ingredients. The potions turned some friends into squirrels, sparkly unicorns, and one frog. Without a caterpillar to be found we did more work hunting. Some friends noticed that the worms did not do well when we handled them too much so they built a worm refuge. The refuge had a soft muddy area with a water reservoir next to it that kiddos took turns replenishing with fresh water. Theda introduces us to a new game, mud ball! This variation on tag was a favorite played for the entire week! All you need to play is a mud ball and several giggling children!!! On Thursday we had our field trip to Zucker Natural Playground! Many kiddos were embroiled in an epic territory battle between two royal families. Others worked hard in the sand area to build a giant volcano. Some kiddos were nervous about poison ivy so we figured out how to identify it and walked around searching for it. We didn’t find any! On Friday we closed out our last day by digging for worms, extending the rivers to make them bend, and pretending to be bees. We created greeting cards to say farewell, or any other special message we wanted to give to a camp mate or family/friend outside of camp. Thank you for entrusting your lovely young ones with us. We had so much fun with them!
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What a wonderful week to end the summer! This week the Sprouts talked about favorite fruits and vegetables, where food comes from, and different jobs on a farm. A favorite art project this week was printing with vegetables-- we cut up carrots, celery, potatoes and peppers to create beautiful textures and shapes. We also learned how to sing "I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas" in sign language and played our all time favorite game-- Moon Flowers! We will miss this fabulous group of Sprouts but hope that everyone has a fantastic school year! This week the Sprouts continued to explore weather and had a great time talking, reading and singing about rainbows, rain and sunshine. We painted colorful skies with pompom clouds, decorated a giant rainbow and even made our own little umbrellas! We also learned more about bees, as we have been noticing them in McGolrick Park, and discussed ways to stay safe from stings. We can’t wait for one final fun-filled week of camp! We had such a fun week of making memories with old and new friends. Making muddy rivers, climbing trees, and searching for bugs is always a big hit. We also did color mixing and painting projects as a group. We got some new dress up stuff this week which has been fun for imaginary play. One of the most special things about wBees Forest Camp is the kind and generous natures of our campers. Something about caring for and holding small things in awe really brings out the heart in all of our campers. This was evident throughout the week and we are grateful we got to spend another week with you all! This week, we continued our study of bugs. While in the park, we made observations on different types of bugs, like worms, cicadas, bees and more. We also focused our study in on bees! After reading some books about bees, we talked about how colonies are structured and what queen bees look like. We learned different facts about bees, which helped campers conquer some fears. We then made connections between bees and other bugs we know. As always, we spent much of our day in the park. Campers loved making references to what they learned as they observed different types of bugs in nature. We talked about ways we can keep bugs safe, like protecting their habitat and returning bugs we find back to nature. Next week we move on to our new study, but we will continue to notice the bugs around us! We had such a busy and exciting week at camp! Your children were such a delight and we truly enjoyed all of their unique and enthusiastic energy. We focused on weather as our theme of study this week. We learned about the continuous water cycle and how water evaporates into the air to form condensation in the form of clouds and then when the drops get big enough they come down as precipitation in the form of rain or snow. The children made a beautiful diorama depicting this cycle. We also discussed and read stories about wind, hurricanes, the sun, and the seasons. We even made rainstorms with our hands and bodies! Your children were so happily engaged in all of the classroom works and activities this week as well. They happily used our kitchen and beloved ice cream and popsicle stand to engage in dramatic play with their friends and many chose to paint, build with a variety of building materials, put together puzzles and so much more. Our outdoor time at McGolrick was filled with so much creative and spontaneous interactions with nature. In the new playground, they used the climbing ropes, slides, swings, and the sprinklers. In the green space, the children were immersed in the joy of digging and creating mud, climbing the climbing tree, and using sticks in creative ways. Our favorite outdoor game this week was “Wrap Up the Candy” where we utilized the parachute to gently give each child a little spin ride in a circle. Thank you kindly for sending your lovely children to us this week and we hope to see you at another camp or around the neighborhood! This week, Saplings learned about bugs! The campers began by sharing the background knowledge they have on bugs they know. After reading some books about bugs and where they live, we made scientific observations about what bugs look like. We talked about body segments, number of legs, types of wings, and antennae. We then practiced counting, by counting different types of bugs. We can't wait to continue our study next week! The Sprouts had a wonderful week exploring the theme of birds! We decorated paper birds with feathers and paint, added moss to paper-bag bird nests, and used fathers as paintbrushes to make unique works of art. At circle time we learned about what makes a bird a bird-- and had a special visit from an ostrich puppet! We spent some time in the green space listening to the local birds and searching the trees for nests. Some favorite songs this week included "I Know A Chicken" by Laurie Berkner, "Way Up In The Sky," and "Two Little Blackbirds Sitting on a Hill." We look forward to another fun-filled week with the Sprouts! This week the Sprouts explored the theme of water. We learned fun facts about sea creatures such as sea stars, sharks and dolphins. We listened to recordings of whale songs and dolphin sounds and tried to make them ourselves. We talked about going to the beach, swimming in the pool and, of course, spent time running through the sprinklers during outdoors time! During art time campers had the chance to create under-sea crowns and ocean collages. Favorite songs this week included "An Orca Whale," "The Goldfish Song," and "5 Little Fishies Swimming in the Sea." We look forward to another great week of camp! This week we closed out our study on waste! Over the weekend teacher Mariko took a picture of a trash can in our wonderful park that was overflowing with trash. Students made observations about the image and started drafting solutions to the problem of too much trash! Many ideas involved recycling. Most kiddos knew about recycling but didn’t quite know how it worked yet. A fun challenge that lasted throughout the week was the great balance beam! Kiddos had taken a really big fallen branch and balanced it between two picnic tables and underneath the created a mud pit! With some careful spotting from adults kids took on the challenge of making it across the treacherous balance beam without falling in the mud! On Tuesday we dove deeper into our learning about recycling to see if that was a solution to our trash problem in McGolrick. We watched short video that showed us the different processes that materials go through to be recycled. Many friends were especially excited about how both metal and plastic are put into a really hot oven to be melted before they are made into new items. Maybe recycling is the key to solving our trash problem! We had more waterslide action by pouring water down the slide and then zooming down! We also had a very special visitor, Agnes the husky dog! Agnes and her owner, a neighbor of a wBees student, kindly allowed many friends to pet her gentle doggo and even take her for a “walk.” On Wednesday we found the fattest caterpillar in wBees history! All kiddos did a great job being respectful to the creature and made sure it made it back to a safe spot after everyone had a chance to take a look. Inside we busted out the snail sensory bin. We looked closely at how snails use slime to move along as they travelled on our hands and arms. We also did more investigation into recycling. During circle teacher Mariko took out 10 plastic bottles and said that these 10 bottles represent all the plastic in the world and asked students to predict how many of these bottles they think would end of recycled. Friends did some great critical thinking when someone pointed out that there was definitely some plastic in the picture of the trash can in McGolrick so that means it couldn’t be all 10. It had to be at least 9 or lower. In the end teacher Mariko revealed that only 1 bottle would end up recycled. Unfortunately, recycling won’t solve our trash problem in McGolrick! Kiddos were quick to come up with other ideas like repairing toys rather than throwing them out when they are broken and not just buying new things but used toys and clothes as well. On Thursdays we had our second field trip of the summer! We had so much fun in Bushwick Inlet Park. As soon as we arrived we noticed that the trees in this park were very different from the trees in our regular space. One tree had huuuuuge bean pods that we broke open and found magical beans! A very fun game was Elves vs. Trolls in an epic battle over the magic beans. Teacher Adrianna was a brave member of the troll team but was no match for the powerful elves. We did a beach cleanup at the edge of the East River and separated our clean up into recyclable and landfill. Kiddos did a great job picking up trash even the really icky stuff! On our way back to home base we stopped in McCarren to play and munch on popsicles that helped us cool down. On Friday after our beach cleanup we were curious about how trash impacts the waterways so we did a little investigating. We learned how plastic can interrupt the natural food cycle that is so important for all life including humans! We read Sea Bear and about trawling and how that really hurts the animals that have waterways as their habitat. Phew! What a fun week! |
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September 2019
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