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You are here: Home / Discover and Explore / Camping Small World

Camping Small World

By Shaunna Evans 15 Comments · This content may contain affiliate links.

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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.

Camping Small World and Sensory Play-Create your own camp site. Fun activity for toddlers and preschoolers!

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

Camping Small World

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!

Camping Small World Play-Roasting Marshmallows

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

Toddler Sensory Play-Camping Theme

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

All of our products are also available on Teachers Pay Teachers if you prefer to shop there.

 

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Filed Under: Discover and Explore, Invitations to Play, Letter C, Preschool, Pretend Play, Sensory, Summer, Toddler Tagged With: camping activities for preschool, camping small world, camping theme, sensory play

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kali @ For the Love of Spanish

    October 7, 2013 at 8:13 am

    Oh I love this! We are actually doing a camping theme this week at our preschool coop, so this will be a perfect activity to do at home to carry out our theme. 🙂 Thanks for sharing on the “31 Days of ABCs”!

    Reply
  2. Heidi

    August 23, 2013 at 12:07 am

    This looks so fun! I’ve never heard of these “small worlds” 🙂 Where did you get the little toy people?

    Reply
    • Shaunna

      August 25, 2013 at 2:58 pm

      We love creating and playing with small worlds! We usually use whatever little people we have from toy sets. Some are Lego people, others are Playmobil, and still others are just miscellaneous sets. We also use a lot of creatures from the Safari Ltd. Toobs.

      Reply
  3. Reshama

    August 22, 2013 at 1:58 pm

    That looks super wonderful. We have never tried making a small world, but can imagine the excitement that this would generate at home! Thanks for sharing
    -Reshama @StackingBooks.com

    Reply
    • Shaunna

      August 25, 2013 at 3:07 pm

      Thanks! If you decide to make one, I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

      Reply
  4. Ashley

    August 19, 2013 at 4:56 pm

    Love the pipe cleaner fire! Thanks for sharing at Mom’s Library!

    Reply
    • Shaunna

      August 25, 2013 at 3:13 pm

      My favorite too 🙂

      Reply
  5. Sugar Aunts

    August 16, 2013 at 10:38 am

    Love it, as always! We are featuring your post this week on Share It Saturday at Sugar Aunts. Thanks for linking up!
    Colleen at Sugar Aunts

    Reply
    • Shaunna

      August 17, 2013 at 8:52 pm

      Thanks, Colleen! Can’t wait to stop by and see all the features.

      Reply
  6. Suanna

    August 13, 2013 at 11:02 pm

    This small world idea looks like so much fun. Thank you for sharing. Maybe one day I will take the time and make one of these for our children.

    Reply
    • Shaunna

      August 17, 2013 at 9:06 pm

      I wasn’t a believer until I tried them and saw just how much my kids enjoyed them (and appreciated how long they are engaged with them). Give it a try. They don’t take very long to put together. 🙂

      Reply
  7. Stephanie

    August 8, 2013 at 9:17 pm

    This small world ROOOOOCKS! I love the campfire and tiny marshmallows!

    Reply
    • Shaunna

      August 11, 2013 at 8:46 pm

      Thanks, Stephanie! Every time I see the photo I want to go roast marshmallows 😉

      Reply
  8. pinkoddy

    August 7, 2013 at 6:48 pm

    What a wonderful idea. We’ve been out camping and seeing dinosaurs in the museum and now I can get them to act it out in small world play – thank you.

    Reply
    • Shaunna

      August 11, 2013 at 8:59 pm

      What a great way for them to reenact fun memories from your adventures! I hope they have as much fun as we did 🙂

      Reply

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