A Camping we will go. . .

Yes, we are going camping, and the girls are SUPER Excited! While I was a Girl Scout, and did do a few camping trips that involved platform tents, my favorite "camping trips" with the troop were in hotels, so I am pretty excited, too! :-)

Being sick last week apparently caused me to lose my mind because I forgot to order any books until Thursday evening. . . so we will be adding to our unit table throughout the week as the books come in, but maybe this will be fun -- "What will there be on the table this morning?"

This morning, they had several books, and we have read almost all of them (my voice can't handle Amelia Bedelia quite yet, I am hoping my cough will be gone to read such a long book later in the week). As soon as they saw the books, they grabbed all of them (and the sleeping bags), and brought them to the sofa for us to read! After we read the stories, we laid the sleeping bags on the floor, climbed in and watched The Sneetches for their roasting marshmallows by the campfire and then Bambi. Since we will be in the park camping, I decided to also tie the woods, nature and woodland creatures into the unit. My favorite book for this is Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets. In it, the little girl is upset when all the animals run from her, but then realizes if she is still and quiet, that they will come back and "play with her." I thought it would be good to remind them of this before our trip this weekend!

While watching Bambi, the girls wanted to make a tent. We do have an outdoors tent, and we have a large castle tent upstairs, but what is the fun in that? So I took out a large blanket and grabbed two chairs. I draped the blanket over the sofa and two chairs, secured the blanket in place by large pillows, laid down a floor of sleeping bags and more pillows and voila! An indoor tent! The girls are LOVING this right now!

There are several camping episodes of their favorite shows saved on TIVO that we will watch throughout the week, as well. That is definitely a plus of planning so far in advance and knowing what units are ahead -- it makes searching TIVO that much easier.

We will continue to read the stories throughout the week before leaving for our camping trip on Friday. We have a YUMMY menu planned and we are really looking forward to it!

So that is our week ahead. . . any ideas or suggestions for this unit, or for good "scary stories" that aren't really scary (all the characters in the stories talk about telling scary stories and I am at a loss in this department!) I'd love to hear them! I'd also love to hear what you are learning this week!