Camp Read-A-Lot Day

Part of Read Across America week includes a fun filled day of camp Read-A-Lot! This awesome resource was created by Angie Olson at Lucky Little Learners. Here’s a link to her pack.

I always talk up any activity we are going to do. Yesterday I was telling the kids all about how fun tomorrow was going to be and that they were going to love it. They were already SO excited before they day even began.

I set up a small tent in my room as scenery. I didn’t let any kids go into the tent this time around. I also but my desks into 7 groups, the number of groups I had, and draped plastic table clothes over them to make tents. I labeled each tent with their camp name.

Thursday morning, they were lined up outside our class door and I came out blaring the classic camp wake up song. If my very descriptive description didn’t give you any idea what song I’m talking about, check it out here. Bonus: The video is 12 hours long haha.

They were confused but excited for what was to come. The first few student’s in started FREAKING out. Which made everyone still outside more excited to come see what was in the classroom. Once everyone was in, I welcomed them to Camp Read-A-Lot. The excitement was crazy!

We quickly calmed down and I sorted them into their camps. I let them know we were having a normal morning (Daily 5, writing, morning meeting) and then we would have camping fun after Lunch and Library. I also let them know if they couldn’t handle being at camp, they could be sent home. Home was a normal desk and chair. They didn’t want to get sent home and my class was SILENT all morning long. It was amazing.

For the camping activities, we used a few of the activities in Angie’s pack. She has a camp warm up, money scoot, and a cute bookmark for them to color. They worked on those activities till recess. After recess, we had an hour for a read-a-thon. They read, ate their snack and loved it.

Camp Read-A-Lot was a success and I plan on doing this again in a couple weeks to get ready for conferences. The class doesn’t know this yet and I bet they’ll be just as excited.

A couple tips to help this be a success if you plan on doing this later:

• Let the kids wear their pajamas! Everyone wants to be comfy during a read-a-thon
• Set clear ground rules and expectations first off
• Follow through with consequences. If you tell them you’ll remove them from camp, remove them from camp if they are out of line
• Have fun and embrace the mess. Your room is going to get messy (that’s why their are no pictures of my room). It will be clean afterwards though!

Tomorrow’s post will be all about Read Across America week and the activities we did this week.