MGT Let's Go Camping- Backpack

Mother Goose Time's August curriculum is called "Let's Go Camping". Our family has never gone camping (can you imagine with two young kids?!?) so this is all new territory for us. We were actually able to borrow a tent from a friends to put in our toy room and the kids LOVED it!!

Mother Goose Time first had me ask "What would you pack if you were going camping?" Since we have never gone camping Mason's first answers were pretty comical. We were in the toy room and he started looking around and naming his different toys. Then I explained to him when you go camping you sleep in a tent like the one that is in our toy room. He then realized everything he wanted to bring would not fit. We talked about that we would sleep in a sleeping bag. We talked about what kind of food we would bring. We agreed that he could still bring his blue elephant, Ellie. 

Then I asked him what we would bring all our stuff in. He said the car at first. Then we talked about how a backpack makes it easy to bring our stuff. He has a backpack that he loves to bring his library books in to the library in so he was excited about the backpack park. Mother Goose Time's first project for us was to make a Handy Backpack. We started by cutting two strips off the top of the bag that would later would be the straps of the backpack. Then I gave Mason and Hailey art supplies to decorate their bag. 

Mason was really excited to put the straps on his backpack and put it on. We hot glued the pieces we cut from the top to the back of the backpack and Mason was good to go. Hailey on the other hand didn't really want to put hers on. Instead she wanted to put more stickers on it. : ) 

Mother Goose Time instructed use to invite the children to look around the room and put objects in their backpacks that they might want to take with them camping. Mason went a little overboard (obviously our conversation earlier about everything fitting in the tent didn't sink in). He had a hard time putting the backpack on after it was loaded up so we had to take some things out. 

 Next we got our Theme Poster to look for supplies. 

Mother Goose Time had us ask "What would you do if you forgot to pack your tent?" Lately Mason has become aware of the fact that is we need something we just have to go to the store to get it. So his first answer was "We could go get one from the store." (Too cute!) Mason then used the glasses to match them to the objects of the Theme Poster.

 Then we played the What's Missing? game. We laid out all the glasses and discussed the objects on each of the glasses. I put three glasses in the backpack and one behind my back. Mason then had to guess which one was behind my back after pulling them out of the backpack. It was a great way to wrap up this activity and relate to our opening questions.

We wrapped up Let's Go Camping-Backpack the next morning. We talked about what letter both Mason and Hailey's names start with. We also talked about what other words begin with M and H. I then gave each of them a set of Letter Cards. We worked together to find the letter B for backpack. We put the letter B in our backpack. Mason and I then went through all cards and named the letters and letter sounds and put them in the backpack. Hailey had a good time putting all the cards in the backpack and then dumping them out.

The first day of Mother Goose Time's "Let's Go Camping" was a lot of fun! We look forward to learning more about camping!