On Tuesday, we had a local guy come in who does a reptile show. He brought several lizards, frogs and snakes, and brought them around for each kid to look at and pet (if they wanted to.) The kids who came to it were amazed and loved it...It was awesome to see big smiles on the faces of some of the kids who usually aren't very engaged in the activities. One girl who is afraid of everything actually petted every reptile, while exclaiming, "I'm brave, right?" One of the best things about our rec program is when we're able to see kids stretch out of their comfort zones and try new things... especially when they actually find out that they enjoy the new things they try!
Meanwhile, in PE, I'd put together another obstacle course, since the Astronaut Training Course from last week was so popular. I took a narrow cardboard box that one of our utility fans had been packed in, cut out some bat shapes from black paper, added string to the bats, and taped the strings to the "ceiling" of the box so that they hung down like they were flying. The kids had to crawl through the "bat cave" as one obstacle. I laid down a blue gym mat and dropped some long, rubbery, bendy fidget sticks onto it, so they had to jump over the snake pit. I piled up all of our parachutes, and the kids had to swim through crocodile infested waters. I put out a bunch of polydots and dropped bean bags around them, and the kids had to hop from stone to stone to avoid the pirahnas. I taped four pool noodles to the ground, two by two, and the kids had to walk across the "narrow bridge." My co-leader made a big poster of a monkey's face with an open mouth, which we attached to our small basketball hoop, so the kids had to toss crumpled paper "fruit" into the monkey's mouth. The obstacles were pretty similar to last week, but with a new theme. The kids really enjoyed it. They seem to like activities that are more or less self-directed, rather than team games.
On our Cooking day, the kids made monkey cookies. My co-leader made large sugar cookies. The kids spread chocolate frosting over them and then attached vanilla wafers as ears and a muzzle, and used tubes of black icing to draw eyes, nostrils and a mouth.
The kids also made rainforest terrariums. I bought plastic jars from the Dollar Tree, and got some Rainforest Animal Toobs from Amazon. The kids had to fill the jar with a scoop of aquarium gravel, a scoop of activated charcoal (also called activated carbon, and available at Wal-Mart in the fish supply section), and several scoops of potting soil. They then added a succulent plant clipping, and chose a Rainforest Toob animal. Finally they sprayed water onto it. I made each step a station for them to go through at their own pace. I didn't get to see the results, because I was running our other activity for the day.
Our other activity was something I put a ton of planning into, and it turned out to be a pretty popular activity, It was called "Sights, Tastes and Smells of the Rainforest." The easiest step was to print out lots of pictures of rainforest animals, along with their names.
I also got a set of mini snack containers from Dollar Tree. In each one I put a spice that came from the rainforest. We had Vanilla, Coconut, Cinnamon, Tumeric, Nutmeg, Allspice, black pepper, chili pepper, cayenne pepper, ginger, cloves, and paprika. I printed off a small picture of each spice and glued it to the lid of the correct container.
The last part was the best. I picked up a bunch of foods (mostly fruits) that come from the rainforest, and put them out on plates for kids to try. We had pineapple, oranges, avocados, papaya, lemons, and dragonfruit, as well as some tapioca pudding and sections of a Hershey bar.
Each picture, scent and food had an index card taped in front of it. Each kid got a strip of smiley face stickers, and they were supposed to put a sticker on their favorite picture, their favorite smell, and their favorite food. That was a way that we voted on our favorites! I was not really surprised that chocolate was the favorite of most of the kids, although some also chose pineapple and oranges. Nobody even tried the tapioca. I don't know why people don't like tapioca! I ended up eating it all myself!
I had also planned on playing a soundtrack of the rainforest on my computer, but it was too chaotic right before the activity, and I ended up not getting the computer. But I don't think anyone minded.
It was sort of an exhausting week! But we sure had a lot of fun!
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