Camping Small World

This week’s theme for Discover & Explore is Camping! Right now it’s much too hot for us to enjoy camping where we live. Instead we created our own camping small world, so we could still take part in all the summer fun that goes along with camping. S’mores anyone?  We’d love for you to share your favorite camping activities, crafts, tips, and resources for kids at the end of this post.

FIND ALL OF OUR CAMPING IDEAS IN OUR PRINTABLE LESSON PLANS

FOR HOME PRESCHOOL AND PRESCHOOL CLASSROOMS.

We combined natural materials from our yard with a few toys we had on hand to make our own miniature campsite.

Materials

• Plastic bin
• Soil for base
• Large pieces of mulch
• Twigs and leaves from shrubs around our home
• Rocks
• Glass beads for stepping stones and the lake
• Small container for the lake
• Water
• Craft sticks for the tent and raft
• Glue
• Felt
• Pipe cleaners to make fire
• Miniature white pompoms for marshmallows
• Mini terracotta pot to make the fire pit
• Small pieces of driftwood for campfire benches
• Small toy figures to use as campers

When creating small worlds for the girls, I try to include elements I know will appeal to each of the girls. As a preschooler Lovey is very engaged in pretend play and story telling. Tinker is most drawn to the sensory elements of the bins.

Lovey’s favorite part of this small world was roasting marshmallows. We glued miniature white pompoms to small twigs, and she was able to fit the twigs into the campers’ hands. She loved it!

As I expected Tinker’s campers spent most of their time swimming in the lake.

What elements of small world play do your kids enjoy most, pretend play or sensory exploration?

GET A FULL WEEK OF CAMPING THEME LEARNING AND PLAY

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.

This camping theme lesson plan pack includes semi-editable lesson plans and hands-on activities for a week full of math, reading, & science learning activities about camping, s’mores, and forest animals.

Watch this short video to see just a few examples of the types of activities and printables included in this set:

This set includes active hands-on learning ideas and the following printables:

1) Animal Tracks Matching Activity (Color and B/W)
2) Individual Camping Survey Sheets (2 versions)
3) Whole Group Camping Graph Headers
4) Words vs Letters Sorting Activity (Color and B/W)
5) Camping Letter Matching Puzzles
6) Camping Number Cards
7) Camping Pattern Cards (Color and B/W)
8) Ending Sound Matching Activity
9) Gone Fishing Counting and Number Recognition Activity

GET YOUR LESSON PLANS

Home Preschool Camping Theme Lesson Plans

Preschool Classroom Camping Theme Lesson Plans

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