K1 Prep Summer Camp

We are having such a fun time in our K1 Prep camp this summer.  I get to work with this wonderful group of kids and watch them grow a ton in a short amount of time.  We're reading and writing and jumping and singing all day long. 

 Today was super fun because we started talking about sorting and classifying objects.  I dumped out a giant container of coins on the floor and then showed the kids a penny.  We talked about it is worth one cent and is copper colored.  Then all the kids were sent on a penny hunt to gather all of the pennies out of the pile.  We continued, one coin at a time, with the nickle (fat and medium sized), dime (tiny coin), and the quarter (the biggest of the 4).  This is a FANTASTIC activity to do at home with this age group.  Pull out your pile of coins and have them sort them into 4 groups.  Use the teaching moment to talk about names and values of coins.

We also started "Guess My Secret Rule" but didn't get to play a ton yet.  It's exactly like the Sesame Street "One of these things doesn't belong" game.  Pick 4 items where 3 have a characteristic that is the same and the fourth doesn't match that characteristic.  The kids have to pick which one doesn't fit the group AND tell why.  The telling why part is super important (it doesn't match because it's a different color/shape/size/thickness/etc).  This game is really fun to do with the contents of a silverware drawer - I plan to do exactly that on Thursday morning with this group :).