Rainforest Week

Our summer recreation program is coming to an end... this coming week will be our last. We had Rainforest Week. We were a little short staffed and so I didn't get the chance to take many pictures, but I can still tell you what we did. We had some exciting things this week!

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!

Fly Me To The Moon

This past week we had an outerspace theme at the summer rec program. This is always a favorite week, and a theme that we keep from year to year even when we change some of the other themes. It can be hard coming up with new ideas for activities for the same theme each year, which we try to do because many of the kids come back every year. They could feasibly be in the rec program every summer from the year they are 5 to the year they are 13, so doing the same projects and games every single year could get old!

First off, here are the sensory bins I added to our sensory area. I know a lot of people make their sensory bins really elaborate, and turn them into a realistic scene with animals and stuff. However, our kids tend to just want to dig in, rather than do a lot of pretend playing, so we keep it pretty simple.

This first one is just aquarium gravel that I found at WalMart. It is black with some flourescent stones thrown in, to represent planets. The gravel actually came that way so I didn't have to mix it myself.
Later I added some glow stars that I found.













The next one is full of confetti stars that I found at Dollar Tree.

We made Alien Slime. You've probably made Alien Slime, but called it something else. It is usually called Gak or Flubber. My favorite slime recipe involves adding equal parts of Elmer's Glue and liquid laundry starch. I saw an idea on another blog that you could add stars to your slime, so I put out the stars from the sensory bin at first. But it turned out that these particular stars are really spikey and made the slime a little painful to play with. I gave every kid a 4 ounce bottle of glue, and a cup with four ounces of starch, so all they had to do was follow the directions to mix food coloring into the glue and add the starch. Most of them loved it! A few thought it was disgusting.

For a snack, we made Moon Munchies. This involves simply spreading cream cheese over a rice cake, and then adding Cheerios as craters. I originally found the idea at Things To Share And Remember. They also used bananas, but since the kids used bananas last week for their cooking project, I didn't want to do it again. I really wanted to use round pretzels, but I couldn't find any at Safeway! It didn't end up mattering. The kids loved these. The adults loved them too! Plus they have barely any calories, so even our kids with diabetes, who have to keep careful track of calories, could eat them with no worries. Here's the example one I made... and then I ate it because I didn't bring a lunch that day!

What we do at the program is have two activities running at once, twice in a row, so half of the kids go to Activity A and half to Activity B, and then they switch. I usually run one of the activities, so there are two activities that I didn't get any pictures of, unfortunately. The first one was the stomp rockets. We had wanted to have some sort of rocket launch, I remembered watching some kids at a special ed school do a rocket launch involving a bike pump, and there was also a way to make a water rocket, and a few other ways that involved actual explosives. But they all seemed hard to do, and I wanted something that was basically fool proof so we wouldn't have a bunch of disappointed kids on our hands if we made something that didn't work. I ended up ordering a Stomp Rocket, and also a Jump Rocket, which is basically a different brand of the same product. Both sets include a stand, an air pump, and foam rockets. You stick a rocket on the stand, then the kids stomp or jump on the air pump, and the rocket goes flying up in the air. The kids had a blast (no pun intended) watching and chasing after the flying rockets. We kept them out all week at recess for the kids to play with, and we'll most likely keep them around for the rest of the summer just because they are fun.

The other activity the kids enjoyed was an Astronaut Training Course, which we did in the gym. It was basically an obstacle course. Here were the stations...
1. I had a duvet cover that I stuffed with pillows and stuffed animals. I called it the Surface Of The Moon, and the kids had to clamber over it.
2. We had two different tunnels... just the regular kind you can buy and pop up.
3. We put polydots out, and called them asteroids. The kids had to jump from asteroid to asteroid.
4. I taped some pool noodles to the ground, and the kids used them as a balance beam.
5. We have a set of Moon Shoes, so the kids had to put those on and walk to a designated line and back.
6. I dragged in our mini trampoline from the sensory room. The kids had to jump ten times to experience "zero gravity."
7. I put some wiffle balls in a bucket. We have a little pop-up basketball hoop set, so the kids had to throw the wiffle balls (or Moon Rocks, as we called them) into the basket.
8. There was a spinning office chair. The kids had to sit on it and get spinned around ten times, and we called it our Rocket Seat.
9. We had some small stuffed animals that we called aliens. We also have a claw grabber toy. The kids had to use the claw grabber toy to pick up the aliens and toss them into the hula hoop of protection.
10. The last one I just thought of at the spur of the moment. We have a box fan in the gym because we have no air conditioning. I told the kids to say their name into the box fan, and called it our Astronaut Message Transmitter, because they could hear their voices sounding weird through the fan.

We used this as a structured activity, but also left it out for the rest of the day so the kids could play in it during their free time if they wanted.

That pretty much brought our Outerspace Week to a close! We're taking a field trip to the planetarium tomorrow, and that will take up the whole day.

I really love the summer rec program! I wish it could go all year!

Snow In July

Trying to come up with some new themes for our recreation program this summer, I had the idea for a Winter Wonderland Week. I got the idea from the old "Christmas In July" parties that people sometimes used to have. Usually we have to stay away from holidays that are connected to specific religions, so I thought, what about doing winter-themed things? Last summer it was extremely hot, and our program is housed in a 1940's era building with no air conditioning, so I thought maybe doing wintery things would cool us off a little. Luckily it hasn't been that hot this summer... but we still had lots of fun!

How do you celebrate winter in July? Here are the things we did. (I even have pictures for some of them!)

Sensory activities... always important in a program for kids with special needs! I made several different sensory bins that we kept out all of the time. I filled one with Epson salt, and added some clear gems from Dollar Tree and some snowflake-shaped gems I found on Amazon. (It looked much better at the beginning of the week, but by the time I took this picture some of the kids had mixed some other random sensory things into it!)

We had two more bins that were filled with instant snow. I bought one package of "Grow Snow" for one, and it came out really nice... much softer and more powdery than most instant snows I've used. There wasn't a lot of it in the package, though, and I didn't have time to order another package. But I read that you could make a similar instant snow from the stuff that is found inside diapers! You just have to cut open the padding of a diaper and shake out the powdery stuff that is inside it. We opened up about 24 diapers to make this box of snow... after shaking the powder out, you add water and stir it up until it becomes white and fluffy. Who knew diapers could do that? Some of the staff didn't like this as much as the Grow Snow stuff, because it was a little more gelatiny. 

On one of the days, I also used the old sensory stand-by, shaving cream! I just called it snow cream. The kids loved it. Two of them actually got onto the table and tried to make snow angels in it. Luckily shaving cream is basically soap, so it didn't stain their clothes or anything! 

Activities: We did many throughout the week. Some I have photos of, and some I don't.
Snowman Bowling... I taped snowman faces to some water bottles that were filled with rice, taped a white table cloth down on the floor to represent snow, and used pool noodles to separate the lanes.

We played Pin The Nose On The Snowman! I think one kid cheated.

We played "Cold Snowball." I don't have a picture of that, but it is played exactly like Hot Potato, but we used a fabric snowball instead of a potato. I even got the snowball wet and put it in the freezer for a while before we played, so it was cold like a real snowball!

We had an indoor snowball fight. I shelled out nearly $30.00 for a set of Snowtime Anytime snowballs. It was worth it! They are soft but have a texture similar to real snow, We used one for the Cold Snowball Game also. I was a little worried that my kids, many of whom have autism spectrum disorders. wouldn't be too enthused about the snowball fight. I envisioned kids standing there looking lost, with snowballs in their hands. But most of the kids really loved it! I also added a rule that, if they got hit by a snowball, they had to turn around three times while saying "Snowman, snowman, snowman," which would get them back into the game. That way there were no "losers" or "winners," and everyone got to play for as long as they wanted to. 

The kids went "ice skating" in the gym. They stood with a paper plate under each foot and just slid around the gym. I wasn't there, but the person leading the activity said the kids enjoyed it... although they got exhausted fast!

We also went sledding indoors. Although I duck taped towels to the bottoms of sleds so that they wouldn't scratch the gym floors, they somehow scratched the gym floors anyways. Be warned. We had to move that activity to the hallways. 

We usually do a cooking activity once a week. This week, the kids made banana snowmen. This was a quick and simple activity. You just take three thick slices of banana and put them on a skewer, the long way so that if you looked at it from the front you would see three circles on top of each other, like a snowman. Pretzel rods served as arms. The kids decorated their snowmen with M&Ms and chocolate chips. I even found candy eyeballs at the grocery store! The kids seemed to like this activity, AND they ate the banana slices as well as the candy! If you are a stickler for healthy foods, you could substitute raisins for M&Ms.

During many of the activities, we listened to snow-themed songs, to get into the mood. It was a challenge finding winter songs that weren't actually about Christmas, but I managed to come up with a decent playlist. It included classics like Jingle Bells, Suzy Snowflake, Sleigh Ride, Walking In A Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow, Baby Its Cold Outside, and Frosty the Snowman, plus some newer songs I found on Amazon like Ingrid Michaelson's "Winter Song." 

I think that is pretty much it for our Winter Wonderland Week! I usually love planning arts and crafts, but there are two high school girls in charge of the arts and crafts aspect of our program. They tend to choose projects that involve adding some embellishments to an already-nearly-finished project (like gluing on eyes and sequins to snowmen that were put together for them ahead of time) whereas I prefer more open-ended projects that allow for creativity. 

Anyways, I think I will probably use at least a few of these activities during the actual winter season of my school year teaching job. Of course I will put a learning spin on them. For instance you could put sight words on the snowman bowling pins and have kids read the words they knock down, or have kids ice skate around as they "read the room." 

Time for me to take a nap now... for the rest of the night!