Showing posts with label Summer Scholars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer Scholars. Show all posts

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Summer Scholar Sunday #5




Each week, I will feature an activity found in the Sun Scholars Summer Program and share some highlights from our Summer Scholar Families.  We'd love to have you follow along.  If you like what you see, and would like to learn more about my Sun Scholar Summer Program, click HERE.


Rocket Snack Packs
Subjects:    Art
Time:         10+ mins
Supplies:       Paper Tube (Toilet Paper Roll), Foil, Glue, Tissue Paper (red/orange/yellow), Scissors, Sharpie Marker, String or Ribbon, Snacks
1.  2.  3.
4.  5.

1.  Glue a small piece of foil to cover one end of your tube.
2.  Fringe the bottom ⅓ of a rectangle of tissue paper.  Glue the top ⅓ around your tube.
3.  Glue a rectangle of foil around your paper tube.
4.  Create a triangle out of foil.  Add glue to your triangle and lay your rocket on top.
5.  Fill your rocket with candies or dry snacks.
6.  To finish, tie a ribbon around the tissue fringe to close.  Use a Sharpie to decorate.

this is from Week 9 - Space Explorers of the Sun Scholar Summer Program



What have the Summer Scholar Families been up to?


Amy

For Sun Scholars this week, we chose to do The Great Outdoors. This is the week my kids have been looking forward to the most, and finally the weather cooperated. The activities we did were:

Story Time: books about different climates: desert, rain forest, beach, arctic, etc.
The kids enjoyed learning about the differences in each area and then drew pictures of what they thought it would look like.

Picnic of Shapes:
We enjoyed eating foods of all shapes. We cut sandwiches into squares, cheese into triangles, carrots into rectangles, oval chips, grapes, bananas cut in circles and ice cream cones.

Nature Hike:
We went on a nature hike up the local canyon. The kids enjoyed hunting for things from nature. They found more rocks than we could carry, bugs, shells, leaves, etc.  We had a busy week (my little brother got married), so we are looking forward to painting the rocks and doing the rocks around the clock next week.

Miniature Terrarium:
The terrariums were such a fun project and turned out so cute. The kids had a great time building their mini forests and even added tiny plastic animals, bugs, fairies and army guys.

Crafty Clocks:
This project was a great one for us, since my kids are very good at digital clock reading, but not so great at reading analog clocks. We have been working on this the past few months, so we really enjoyed this project.

Fairy Homes and Elf Hotels:
To go along with this project, we watched Tinker Bell & the Great Fairy Rescue. Princess wanted her fairy house to look exactly like the one in the movie, so we came as close as possible.  It was so fun to listen to the kids imagine what fairies and elves would be visiting soon. Luckily we had plenty of doll furniture to borrow from. They left a fairy tea party set up in the house, with mini marshmallows. The hubby and I snuck out after the kids were in bed and left tiny footprints and half-eaten treats. The kids were amazed in the morning.

Tree Through the Seasons:
This was a fun project. It was especially interesting to see how my little ones perceive the seasons. We used different mediums for each season, cotton for winter, tissue paper for fall, pussy willows for spring and grass for summer. Handsome thought in terms of holidays more than seasons, so his trees were decorated with stickers. Stockings and ornaments for winter, pumpkins for fall, watermelons and beach gear for summer and Easter eggs and bunnies for spring.

We had a great time this week! Due to the wedding we didn't get to do as many activities as usual, but that's what I love about this program. You can just do what fits your schedule and save the rest for another time. They are great boredom buster activities.


Melissa
We were off of school this week but I wanted to send you some photos of our Movie Night that we held in conjunction with last weeks teachings!   We showed the original Toy Story. We had about 6 families over. Served Popcorn, Cracker Jacks, Twizzlers and drinks!  Had a blast. Also had the bonfire going!  

 



Emily
I really enjoyed this week, do I say that every time?  This week was perfect for us.  We were able to go camping with a friend for a week, and I was nervous to how I was going to work out the Sun Scholars Activities.  This weeks plans added structure and fun to our trip.  Plus it was a blast to have extra kids and hands to accomplish it.

Picnic of Shapes.  I was doing a quick lunch and just cut the food into different shapes.  The kids loved the picnic and all the different shapes they could eat.  Instead of asking them to eat their bananas, it was funner for the kids to eat their circles.  Plus it was easier to plan the food by shapes.

Nature Hike & Hunt.  We did this a couple of different times.  They loved learning about the different plants and looking for the objects. The kids would run to an object and then run back with grins.

 

Painted Rocks.  I love how these projects all lead into one another.  I used fingernail polish to let the kids paint.  they loved the little brushes and their own paint without making a huge mess.

Rocks around the Clock

Nature Words & Story Time.  Since we were camping we only had a couple of books, so we reread these a couple of times.  Then the kids would use the words they learned when we went on our hike.

Mapping the way.  Since we were in a new place, this was a great idea for the kids.  They complained about it at first, but were super proud of themselves afterwards.  Plus it helped for them to make a map to the fire where we got to eat smores.

Writing with Sticks.  We did this on our hike.  The kids loved writing their names.  We also wrote different words with the sticks.

Over all we loved this lesson.  I wish we had more time to do all of them, we'll just have to come back to this lesson.  We loved running around the woods with each other and can't wait to do it again.  Thanks for this week.

Sun Scholars


Thanks to the Summer Scholar Families for sharing with us.
We'll see you back next Sunday for our last week with our Summer Scholar Families!


Sunday, May 29, 2011

Summer Scholar Sunday #4



Each week, I will feature an activity found in the Sun Scholars Summer Program and share some highlights from our Summer Scholar Families.  We'd love to have you follow along.  If you like what you see, and would like to learn more about my Sun Scholar Summer Program, click HERE.


Beach Bucket Cake
Subjects:    Life Skills & Math
Time:         15+ mins
Supplies:       Yellow Cake, Plastic Bucket (that holds 8-9 cups), Vanilla Pudding, Graham Crackers (1 cup crushed), Chocolate Shells, Plastic Shovel

this is from Week 6 - Beach Party of the Sun Scholar Summer Program

What a fun way to celebrate summer with your children!  This cake in a bucket is SO easy to prepare, you can practically leave the kitchen to your child.  This is sure to be a crowd pleaser!

Directions
      1.       Give your bucket and shovel a good wash before use.
      2.       Tear (or cut) the cake into 2” chunks.  Place a layer of cake chunks in the bottom of the bucket.
      3.       Spread a layer of pudding over the cake chunks.
      4.       Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all the cake has been used, ending with a layer of pudding.
      5.       Sprinkle the crushed graham crackers over top to create the ‘sand’.
      6.       Add some chocolate shells (and perhaps a plastic crab?), your shovel, and dig in!

Tip:  To crush your graham crackers, place them in a Ziploc bag and gently roll over them with a rolling pin until they look like sand.


What have the Summer Scholar Families been up to?


Amy
This week we chose Mice, Cookies & More. We love the Laura Numeroff books and read them over and over. So I knew the kids would really enjoy this week's activities.

The activities we did this week were:
Story Time: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
Chocolate Chip Math
My Family Portrait Retell the Story
Crazy Crayons
Homemade Cookies & Milk
Chocolate Chip Hunt
Story Time: If You Give a Pig a Pancake, If You Give a Moose a Muffin & If You Take a Mouse to the Movies
Mouse Scavenger Hunt
Write Your Own Story
Color Changing Milk

  


This was such a fun week for us. The kids loved all the activites, especially those involving chocolate chips. The Crazy Crayons were a great way to use up all our broken crayons, which we always seem to have plenty of. We are going to use the rest to make the Colorful Crayon Sun Catchers today. A great rainy Sunday afternoon activity.

Hopefully the sun will come out to shine through them when we are done.  Princess is a budding artist/author/teacher/doctor, it depends on the day, so she really enjoyed the Family Portrait and Write Your Own Story activities. The Scavenger Hunt and Homemade Cookies & Milk were a big hit with my younger boys. Smash & Dash easily found the items they were looking for thanks to the pictures on the cards.
Handsome thought the Color Changing Milk was amazing and they all did this project over and over. Good thing I had extra milk on hand!

I had a great time this week, all the activities were fun, but I loved the Retell the Story activities. My older two are advanced on their reading levels but really need to work on their comprehension. So, this will be a great activity to use year round. Thanks for the fun week!! We're hoping the weather cooperates for outdoors or beach week next time!!


Melissa
This week for our Summer Sun Scholar Program we used the Unit called Animal Fun!

Story time: We read a story called GORILLAS. It was a non-fiction book that gave us A LOT of details we did not know about these amazing primates!  It surprised the children to know that Gorillas have thumbs and fingers just like we do.  One exercise that I had them do was try to pick up a pencil and write without using their thumbs. It was FUN, hard, but FUN!  They also banged on their chest like Gorilla's do to ward off other animals.    They knew that they could never have a gorilla as a pet.

Lost Pet Poster: For this assignment they had to pick any animal that they imagined as their pet and create a poster to hang up as if the pet was lost.  Molly picked a Cow and called it Molly.  Zachary picked a Cat (our cat) and called him Jobbie (long O sound - our cat).  They created the posters using large sheets of paper, although there are templates in the program to use.  They came out cute!  I put all the "info" on them once they did their animal pictures.

Learning about Animals: This week we studied Ants. While Ants are technically Insects, we used them for this exercise because they already had knowledge of the Ant.  The described the ant by labeling the parts of the ant on a worksheet.  We talked about Fire Ants also and they drew pictures of the fire ants and their nests.

Movie Party Planning: This was a fun activity especially since I had already planned on showing an outdoor movie on our big screen for Memorial Weekend.  I gave the kids a few movies to pick from as our "Now Showing" movie. They picked Toy Story.   We talked about how many children will be inviited and how many bags of popcorn we should make up for them. Zachary suggested we also have juice boxes available.  We made a shopping list of what is needed and we will go on Saturday morning to get all our supplies. (look for pictures to come on this Sunday Morning on our blog)

Additional Story Times:  In addition to the Gorillas we read inthe beginning of the week, I pulled out some simple readers by Scholastic for Zachary to read TO US and show us the pictures. He read several books on animals to us.

This unit was fun and I can see us doing the Movie Party Time assignment over and over several times this Summer!


Heather
Can you believe, I get a note from Heather telling me she had her baby girl last Tuesday, got home Friday, and was hoping to have something to send to us this week?  Oh my goodness..... ha ha.  Heather, I just want to say CONGRATULATIONS to you and your family on your new addition!  Every mom out there will completely understand if you are dedicating your time to your new baby and your family's needs before sending us updates.  We hope you and baby are happy and healthy!


Emily
Homemade Cookies & Milk.  We started the week out by my daughter and son making cookies for the family.  It was a so sweet to see them work together and it was the first time they had cooked all by themselves, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner.  I was able to help out a little, like what a tsp was.

Chocolate Chip Math.  The kids had fun counting the chocolate chips and eating them.  We got a bunch of different kinds, so the kids could add the dark and milk together.  We did this a couple of times this week.  When the kids were getting bored and needed a treat we would count again.

My Family Portrait.  It was fun to see how the kids see our family.  Each picture was so different and loved how they named all the people.  In one picture, I was the smallest person.  I guess size is in the eye of the beholder. 

Learning about Mice.  I really enjoyed the fact sheet that was included in the printables.  I learned stuff I never knew and my sister and kids thought I made it up.

Chocolate Chip Hunt.  This was an afternoon treat, and it was super fun.  When my kids had made the cookies they got to choose what to put in them.  So they choose three different flavors.  It made fun tasting cookies, but the hunt was more exciting then it would have been if I had made the cookies. :)

Color Changing Milk.  My kids really loved this and they asked to do it again.  I was surprised by the reaction of the soup and colors but it was really fun.

This week was fun. We read “If you Give a Mouse a Cookie” and also “If you give a Moose a Muffin.”  We love the moose one more and then the kids wanted to do some of the activities that were in the book.  So we had to have a puppet show.

Sun Scholars

Thanks to the Summer Scholar Families for sharing with us.
We'll see you back next Sunday for more Summer Scholar fun!


Sunday, May 22, 2011

Summer Scholar Sunday #3




Each week, I will feature an activity found in the Sun Scholars Summer Program and share some highlights from our Summer Scholar Families.  We'd love to have you follow along.  If you like what you see, and would like to learn more about my Sun Scholar Summer Program, click HERE.


Miniature Terrarium
Subjects:    Science
Time:         10+ mins
Supplies:       Small Jar, a variety of natural items, such as moss, pine cones, tree bark, seed pods, etc.

this is from Week 5 - The Great Outdoors of the Sun Scholar Summer Program


Have your child create their own miniature terrarium with items they collect on a nature hike.  Take some time to explore the outdoors for items they can include in this project.

  

Creating a Miniature Terrarium
·         Clean and dry your jar and lid.
·         Spread out your collected items on the table in front of you.
·         Place the moss in the lid.
·         Have your child select other collected items and arrange them on top of the moss.  You can “burry” the roots of small plants and flowers in the moss to encourage them to grow.
·         Dampen the arrangement by sprinkling or spraying with water.
·         Gently place the jar over top of the arrangement and screw into place.
·         Find a safe place to keep your terrarium for all to enjoy.

  

Note:  I found these great little jars (in the photos) at Michael's for $1 a piece.  I thought they added some nice character, but you could just as easily grab something from your recycling bucket.


    

We didn't find any brightly colored berries to throw in this time, but the kids really enjoyed this project.  From our picnic, nature hunt at the park, to the building of their terrariums.  A great project for the kids!



What have the Summer Scholar Families been up to?


Amy
This week our family chose Week 3 - Animal Fun. The activities we did were:
Story Time
Learning About Animals
Newspaper Math
Movie Party Planning
Movie Invitations
Movie Snacks
Movie Review
Lost Pet Poster
Learning About More Animals
Birdwatching

 
For Story Time, the kids chose books about wolves and mammals. We also got a bird watching book to identify the birds in our backyard. The kids enjoyed learning new facts about their favorite animals and creating their animal fact sheets afterward. We had a very stormy, rainy week, so we didn't see many birds. We'll continue this next week with nicer weather.


We had a great time with the newspaper math. It was fun to see what kind of menus my kids would put together. It was also good for my older kids to see how much a meal can cost. The younger boys enjoyed trying to find the numbers in the paper.

Our family LOVES movie parties, so we had a great time planning our animal themed one. We decided to watch Bolt. We did animal themed
snacks: Puppy Chow, Gummy Bears, Swedish Fish, Pigeon Feed (popcorn), etc. They made puppy beds on the floor and convinced me to serve their drinks in bowls so they could lick it up like puppies.


We had a great time with animal week! There were so many activities in this week that we weren't able to squeeze in, so we will have another animal themed week soon.

Many friends and family have asked how the Sun Scholar program has been going. So far, we all love it. My kids are still in school right now, but as soon as I pick them up, they ask what Sun Scholar activities they get to do today. In fact, it has been hard to get them to do their regular homework first. We have all loved the activities so far and can't wait to enjoy the rest of the them. 


Melissa
Mailmania was our topic this week:

Address book:  The first assignment the kids completed was adding another "person" to their address book.  Zachary added his "Bubby", aka grandma.  One thing that surprised me was that he never knew her "real name"....lol...we then added a picture to it and put it into his address book!  We talked how important it was to have all the correct spelling and zip codes on the address so that the mail would get to her.

Mail Sorting: on Monday, we received quite a lot of mail from all around the US, which worked out great for our 1st assignment this week!  1 First I laid all the mail out on the table and read to them the states they came from (Printed out the map of the US that is provided with the program). Then the children found that state and marked it with an X.  After going through all the mail I asked a few questions:  What piece of mail came the furthest?  Closest?  Any of the mail come from states that border us?  We had 1 piece from CA and several others from out in the west (we are east coast).   

   
Graphing our mail - I printed out the graphing sheet provided and the kids graphed the TYPE of mail that was received.  Magazines, junk mail, bills, notes & cards etc.  This was fun for them to see how much JUNK we get...lol...

BONUS IDEA: I had for my preschooler was to take the envelopes (we had all sizes) and put them into order according to their size.  She had fun with this one!

  
- after a quick lesson on what stamps are, what they mean and how they are used, the children made their own stamps. (We did not use the printable sheet provided as I was out of ink that day in the printer so we made our own).  Molly made a flower and put $ 10 as the postage!  Zachary made a Lego Man (of course) and put $ .20 on his...lol....they were very proud of them!

They loved this unit and I can see spending another week on it for sure!


Heather
The kids favorite activity this week was the ABC Scavenger Hunt

Our daughter loved finding all the letters of the alphabet on the back of cereal boxes. When she was done, she had moved on to cracker boxes. When I poured the cereal this morning, she asked if she could try finding the letters on the milk carton. 

  

Just as we had sat down to work on this activity, a neighborhood friend knocked on the door to see if our son could play. Instead of canceling the activity, I sent our son and his friend on the scavenger hunt around our block, to find objects, signs and words starting with each letter of the alphabet. They not only played together, but learned together, and had a great time creatively finding ways to fill in Q and Z.

I am continually amazed at the versatility of this program. The age of the child does not matter. The activities have been so well chosen and thought out, that they can (with little stress and effort on my part) be adapted to children of all ages.

The activity this week also reemphasized to our children that learning is everywhere, in everything. And that learning is fun. 


Emily
This has been a crazy week and I'm so thankful for the Sun Scholar Summer Program.  I had sick kids this week, it was so nice to pull out an activity for the kids and have it be worth the extra effort.  Our activities were from week 3, Animal Fun.

Learning about Animals.  I'm glad that I had reserved a bunch of books about animals last week.  We sick littles, they loved cuddling on the couch reading about different animals.  I was amazed all the different books our library had on animals, books I've never really borrowed before.

  

Newspaper Math.  This was a huge hit.  We did this twice.  The first time I had the kids cut out what they wanted and the price. Giving us a chance to talk about value.  I also used this opportunity to make a shopping list for what I wanted at the store.  When I did go shopping, the kids were excited to hold my "list" and help me find what I needed.  The second time we looked for numbers and it was fun to have the kids help each other.  If one couldn't find an 8, another would give him one from his page.


Squishy bag Fun.  I was more excited about this then the kids, but it turned out fun.  We put in different colors allowing the kids to mix the colors and knowing whose bag belonged to which kid.  I didn't use duct tape, and my son squished his out of the bag. :(  Live and learn.


Bird Feeders/Bird Watching.  My kids loved, LOVED this.  I didn't have birdseed so instead used cheerios.  My birds (kids) loved eating the treats as we prepared the bird feeders.  We hung them on a tree outside our front window and every time one kid pass the window he/she had to look out for birds.  If one kid looked out the window for birds, they all had to come running.  It was soo exciting when the birds did come and eat our trees.  There was cheers all over the house. :)

Things to know about me.  I really enjoyed sitting down with each child and talking to them all about themselves.  It was funny to hear what they thought my name was, to see the world in the kids eyes.

Sun Scholars

Thanks to the Summer Scholar Families for sharing with us.
We'll see you back next Sunday for more Summer Scholar fun!


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