Summer Camp-England Adventure

This week we traveled to London, England. We began by diving into the Olympic Games!

We started by listing what we knew and discussing what we wanted to know.

We learned that many countries participate in the Olympics and that they represent their countries with a flag, so we colored our flag to represent America!

Next, we searched for information about the torch. It is an ancient tradition started in Greece over 2700 years ago. Each year a torch is taken to the country where the Olympics will be held, it is lit and stays lit through out the games. It is extinguished in the closing ceremonies. In art, we made our own torches!

Outside, we released some energy playing some our own Olympic games!

We even had Olympics inspired clothing!

We learned about competition and how teams use teamwork to compete and try to win. We learned how the athletes in the Olypics are called to stand on steps for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

Afterwards, we made our own medals in art. Naturally, we have all winners ;), so we made 1st place medals!

After learning about the Olympics, we studied England. The kids were amazed to learn that it's an island. I have family that lives there that hosted my children's Flat Stanley and made a book all about England for them. I brought it to share with the kiddos and we learned about some of the gigantic castles, amazing ships and ports and historical landmarks in England. If you don't know who Flat Stanley is, check him out here! 

We got busy building some castles of our own. We used these castle blocks which I love. They come with a book that discusses architecture and has some sample plans to help you get started.

We also learned that England has Parliment and a Queen. They used to have Kings and Queens in the past that lived in some of the castles. America is different, we have a government with a president. We made crowns and pretended we were kings and queens.

After learning about the famous Crowned Jewels, we dug around for some jewels in the sand table.

We also learned about a few famous people from England. One of our favorites was Beatrix Potter and we read some of her sweet tales. They loved this classic:

We also learned about Shakespeare, well, on a Pre-K level anyways, and discussed his first theater, The Globe. We had the book pictured below that is a pop up minature version of the famous Globe. It was a wonderful glimpse into the past.

We even rebuilt Stonehenge!

And lastly, we learned that there is tea time in England, which usually just means a mealtime. However, many times tea is served with tea and finger foods like scones. We baked up some scones of our own during circle time. We had maple flavored scones and apple cider in favor of tea and held our own real and pretend tea parties. The tea set at home center was by far the favorite center of the week and the children played there very intently. I have included several pictures of them because they are absolutely precious! First up, though are the scones we made! You can find the recipe here. (We omitted the walnuts since we are a nut free environment.)

And the tea parties....

We loved our England Adventure. Next week we are taking a flight to Australia, so we'll meet up with ya in the outback!