How to Keep their Brains from Melting in the Hot Summer Sun

In case you didn't know, here in Cobb County (Georgia) the 2011 Summer Vacation has been extended by a couple of weeks. For some parents, this is great news. For other parents, not so much. Whatever your opinion, if you are a parent, you need a plan for keeping your kids safe and engaged during those long summer days. Most parents, especially in families where all of the adults work, have already signed their children up for daycare camps, YMCA camps, sleep away camps, sports camps, dance camps, and so on. Many kids are also signed up for neighborhood swim teams, and other summer sporting activities. All of these activities should keep kids active, engaged, and safe, while still having "summer" fun. For kids (and parents, too), having "fun" is the number one goal of summer. For parents, however, second on the list might be keeping our kid's brains stimulated and engaged in preparation for the upcoming school year. The good news is that combining fun with keeping the brain stimulated and engaged is something you CAN make happen.

Places to Go:

• Tellus Science Museum: Check out their Summer Passport Program

This Museum is near Cartersville about 30 to 45 minutes from Marietta and has small group pricing if you want to go with a group of friends.

• Booth Western Art Museum: Check out their summer program, Take a Wild Ride on a Cattle Drive

This Museum is in downtown Cartersville. Afterwards you may want to take a stroll on the traditional downtown square.

• The Library: Check out their Kid's Page which include a calendar of kid friendly events. 
• Atlanta Botanical Gardens: They have an awesome children's garden
• Atlanta History Center: They have a garden (Connor Brown Discovery Trail) designed just for children and a variety of children, family, and school programs for all ages. Another resource they offer is Summer Camp programs. 

The Atlanta History Center provides an opportunity to learn about local history and native plants and animals.
Activities/Crafts:

• Help your kids start a book club: Check out the Spaghetti Book Club that contains book reviews by kids for kids.
• Do some hands on math and science experiments with the help of these free activity guides offered by the AIMS Foundation.
• Reuse fast-food paper bags to make paper bag puppets. Have your child write a story starring the puppet on the back of the paper bag. 
• Does your family drink milk? Reuse the milk containers to make an animal, storybook character, or anything else they can imagine. Check out Danielle's Place for some very creative milk jug ideas.

Tips:

• Don't spend too much time on summer workbooks from places like School Box. If your child has an area of learning that needs work, find activities that focus on that area. However, you don't want your child to get burned out on paper/pencil activities before the new school year begins. 
• Talk to your kids: Talk about different foods in the grocery store, help them count the money in their "piggy" banks, discuss interesting or funny things that happen in TV shows or movies they watch, talk about the plants and flowers in your yard or at the local park. 

Get Your Kids Writing Creatively with this "Hook"

A few weeks ago, while at Dunkin Donuts, my daughter noticed that our paper bag had the recycle symbol on it. She and I decided to brainstorm ways to reuse the lunch sized paper bag, and settled on transforming it into a puppet. After drawing on the "flap" side of the bag to design our puppet, we decided to write a story about an adventure that our "character" might experience on the "flat" side of the paper bag. We had so much fun and she did not even realize that she was telling about the character, describing the setting, and that the story had a problem and solution. In the classroom, that activity can go a step further by using the bag as the "graphic organizer", then having the student add more details and events to extend the story. Each student could even brainstorm by having his or her puppet tell about itself to a peer partner.

Paper Bag Puppet Story Starters

Although many children love to create stories and even write them, it can be difficult for them to create on command just because it happens to be time for Writer's Workshop. Sometimes we all have writer's block. Creating a puppet using very affordable lunch sized paper bags is a great "hook" to get a story idea going. If the puppet is a fictional character (imagined or borrowed), it can inspire a narrative piece. If the puppet is an animal it can inspire fact gathering to be able to write an informational piece about the animal. The student could even write a how-to or procedural piece about how to make a puppet out of a paper bag!

Resources
Additional Story Staring Ideas
How to Make a Paper Bag Puppet
Images for Paper Bag Puppets
Owl and Turtle Puppet Templates
Paper Bag Monkey Puppet
Writing Graphic Organizers

Have You Read "The Paper Bag Princess"?

Tomorrow I have the sincere joy of being the Mystery Reader in my daughter's 1st grade classroom and I am going to read The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch. A twist on traditional princess themed stories, The Paper Bag Princess is all about Princess Elizabeth who rescues Prince Ronald from a fire-breathing dragon. Some might call this a modern princess tale because the ending is not very fairly-tale like at all. But, it is very funny!

For most of the story, Princess Elizabeth wears a paper bag because the dragon burned everything else, hence she is a paper bag princess. She also discovers character traits about herself and the prince through her journey to save him while wearing only a paper bag. I don't want to totally give away the ending, so I will say no more.

Tomorrow we will create a paper bag princess or, if the boys want, a paper bag prince using (you guessed it) a lunch bag sized paper bag, and a template of Princess Elizabeth's head and arms. I found several websites containing directions for doing this craft. The links are below.

If you go the the official Robert Munsch site you can hear the story read aloud and see the other books that he has written. The site is very colorful, kid friendly, and ideal for the interactive white board.

Paper bag princess puppet
Another paper bag princess puppet
Family Literacy Guided Lesson (PDF)
Word Search
Play Production Guide (useful info and an activity sheet)
Author study on eThemes