Thanks to all the friends who sent me excellent ideas for planning a summer
camp week in the library. I feel very motivated at this point! I thought
some of the rest of you might like the ideas.
Here are the suggestions I received:
I do a Saturday event in the spring for 3rd, 4th, and 5th called YAP (Young
Aspiring Poets). We tackle as many different kinds of poetry reading and
writing as we can get through. It has been very successful.
What fun! I'd do a theme a day- with a scheduled day-
Welcome, free time at centers (20 minutes)
Story (20 minutes)
Activitiy (20 minutes)
Video (author study, book you read, something ) (20 minutes)
Snack, potty, wash up, (20 minutes)
Outdoor activity (Mother May I to the story, act out Mother Goose Rhymes)
(20 minutes)
Story outside under a tree (20 minutes)
Charades outside - acting out the story (10 minutes)
Rest inside, listen to a story on tape (15 minutes)
Free reading till pick up time (15 minutes)
Cooking day- read stories about food, mix ingredients- make edible playdogh,
etc
Types of fiction
Non-fiction- science experiments day
Craft books- origami, drawing
Countries - could watch a video about the country
I'm on a roll -if you do countries or continents - 1 per day- you could
include singing songs from that place -
Map skills- look at the atlas of the world - plan trips - get brochures from
a travel agent
Folk and fairy tales from the country (Japan and china have some fun
stories)
It would be like Vacation Bible School- structured fun :)
I am a camp director for an Equestrian camp. I know you're looking for
something completely different I can tell you some of the things that worked
well for me.
One year I had a different theme for each week of camp. One week was
"Pirates of the Caribbean" and all of our crafts and activities involved
pirate things (treasure chest decoration, "loot" bags, etc). The next week
was "Christmas in July." If you took that idea for a summer reading camp you
could pull related books, do a craft item that relates to the theme, perhaps
a Reader's Theater script could be written from a favorite book and then
performed for parents at the end of the week, etc.
Hi, if I could have a group for half a day, I would have them write a book.
We use to play this game where you would start them off with the first
sentence then each person would add a sentence to the story. You could do
something like that with each student adding a line to the story then give
them time illustrate the book. When they were done you could add it to your
collection or give it to a classroom at the beginning of school. Another
thing that my kids love is to do Reader's theater and perform it. If you
had enough kids to divide into three or four groups, they could work on it
for a while then perform it the same day. I would also let the kids make
bulletin boards for the school year. Have them design it and do it on paper
the size of your board then as the year goes just put the new one up. The
kids love seeing stuff like that. Especially when they can think back and
"say I remember doing that, you should have been there. That was cool." You
als might check out the Streachy lesson books. They have a lot of good
activites from food, crafts, to lessons but you can't do it all in a 20
minute library schedule.
I would suggest seeing what your local public library is doing for their
summer reading program. They often use the state suggestions and have
materials for the public librarians. Then you could do a more indepth off
their theme and maybe share some ideas or extend their plans.
Diane- for many years I worked in a day care that kind of woked that way in
the summers and I also worked at a public library that used a program a
week- some of our best programs worked this way:Get a theme: discover
summer,say,and then find and beg(or pay,if you can)local experts to come and
help discover their area- we had star gazing(we used charts,since it was
daytime) and the police came and talked about Mcgruff,the crime dog. We had
retired railroad engineers,pilots,and crafters come and demonstrate,if they
could safely,what they did. One of the other Librarians did Ukranian eggs
and we had a basket weaver come. If you ask around you will find many people
who have hobbies you would never expect- Fr. Lang. speakers. etc.are
interesting,too. This is only part of the day. The other part of the day you
have interest centers,which you can ideally base on yesterday's visitor-
pictures to color, puzzles based on a picture of the activity, say a picture
of a basket that has been cut up,then stories that have a basket in them and
a song or two, with a dance, if possible,and they are not too old. (Picken'
up Paw-paws, put 'em in your basket, etc.)if you have computers, you could
have "writing camp" for an hour a day,or for a week at a time.
How about thinking games - chess, sudoku, kakuro, tangrams, etc
Also, you could teach story-telling, do a play or even write a play
This sounds like great fun. How about the students making their own books.
You could cover the different genres of fiction or non-fiction. Then let
the students create their own books with a story and pictures. If your
school has a binder you can bind them, otherwise let them make covers for
them with stiff construction paper or use folders.
Do you have video or audio equipment available? On of the things I proposed
doing for our summer camp was a book trailer or podcasting class. Kid would
pick a book and outline either a 30 or 60 second trailer or a podcast
review. Actually, for the book trailer, you could probably get good results
with Power Point as well.
Granted this works best if you have more time (our camp is two to six
weeks).
I would use both fiction and non-fiction books on a project together. This
allows for so much to do with writing and reading while learning about the
format of each type of book. I would search the old public library summer
program themes. I am sure your public library has the binder they used from
all the summers before. There are program ideas, craft ideas, and promotion
ideas in there.
A colleague and I do a summer camp every year centered around our TLA
Bluebonnet Award books. We take 5 of the picture books (one per day) read
it and do at least 2 crafty projects centered around the book. We also have
a snack that is "theme-related" (read: no necessarily healthy!) And then to
wrap up the day we read one of the shorter chapter books - which takes all 5
days. We have had great success - and the income is not too shabby...
Diane Averett/Librarian
Kerr-Vance Academy
700 Vance Academy Road
Henderson, NC 27537
252-492-0018
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