Science Camp 2011: Part III (of III)

This is the end of the Science Camp summaries that Sabra, her sister Suzi, and I all put on for our kids (thus the butt shot).  You can see what else we were up to:  Part I and Part II.  I know there are a ton of pictures, but it was really such a fun-packed time and the kids LOVED it!  I especially love getting my kids psyched up for fun to come, and with this event I was every bit as excited as they were about it!

After body science, we moved along to Sabra’s portion where she talked about Native Americans and petroglyphs before our hike to Lions Mouth Cave.  She made a scavenger list of items to find on our way up, so it was fun to watch the kids stop and cross things off their list and also take note of things that they could add to their flora and fauna books from the first day.

You can see C was pretty excited once we found it.

So cool.

Sabra did a great job talking about all sorts of history of people and how they kept records and how they drew these petroglyphs.  I love this sort of stuff.  (Sabe’s so beautiful.  And has such a cute little pregnant belly).

The kids each got some papers with symbols on them to put in their notebook, and were given the chance to make up their own story using the symbols.

They also walked around to see if they could find any symbols that were on their papers.  And they could, which made them super excited!

The kids were each given play dough to make something that represented them.  C chose a peregrine falcon.

B made a red kangaroo and so did D.

They got to stand up in front of everyone and share why they made what they made.

The next science subject was mine and we talked bugs.  I found some really fun and some really disgusting facts about bugs that we read together.  Then at home I had already caught some ants from my yard and made an ant farm, and handed out a paper they could paste in their notebooks with directions on how to make their own ant farm.  My kids loved having that ant farm for a couple weeks (we let them go after Science Camp—and I can say, the ants were much more interesting to look at with sand than the dirt they match—I tried both).  I also learned a ton of interesting things about ants and we discussed those and the typical parts of bugs, etc.

Then it was off to catch crawdads after going over exoskeletons.

Thankfully we were able to catch crawdads for those of the kids who wanted them.  They were pretty small, but to them it was a crawdad and a small one was better than nothing!

Although the oldest one stayed behind and caught this baby.  Don’t worry, we didn’t eat them and shortly set them free again.

Sabra talked about bats and sonar.  We tried some bat diving with sand-filled socks. The kids were quite determined to get bats diving to their socks.  We saw a bunch far away, but only one came closer to us once.  But throwing socks up in the air as high as possible at night when you’re typically sleeping was a blast to these kiddos.

But the picture makes that sock look like a bat, doesn’t it? 

I really had so much fun putting in the work on the lessons and the planning.  I told my sister that Science was never my strong point, but this made me appreciate it so much more.  I do love nature science, however, so I’m sure that helped.  But really, our world is so amazing and it was really fun to get the kids excited about learning!

Thanks for the kind comments regarding it all!  It always helps when you have good friends or family to plan stuff like this with who are just as excited about it.  Thanks to Sabra for suggesting it and having awesome kids and nieces/nephews who let us tag along!