During the summer months, the summer camp children have been expressing their creativity in so many ways. During one activity, we used toilet paper rolls, felt sheets, googly eyes, pipe cleaners and scissors. Educator Nicole had made a lion out of the materials as the weeks theme was "Safari Blitz" so we worked all morning on our safari animals. As friends came in that day, they went straight to the table to get to work. Luke came to the table and started creating his animal. "It's a 9 eyed safari monster" he said. Aubrey and Skylar came to the table as well and picked out some felt to use for their animals. "I made a bat, see the wings?" she said to Aubrey. "I need to glue the felt around the roll so I can make my cheetah" Maria said to Educator Pilar. As Lenora was trying to make hers, she noticed that it was a little hard to cut the felt into pieces. Willow noticed that she was having a difficult time and went over to Lenora. "Do you need help, because I can help you cut some pieces if you need?" she asked Lenora.
During this activity, a lot of the children's skills we coming out in the open. One of the main kills I noticed was their social and communication skills. The children were communicating and interacting with each other during their play, and lending a helping hand to a peer in need. I also noticed that their fine motor skills were put to the test during this as well. They needed to use the scissors to cut the felt and pipe cleaners to the size they wanted them as well as manipulating them into the shapes that they needed them to be in. The children also needed to be very cautious with how they placed the eyes so that way the eyes didn’t fall off.
The same day we did this activity, a couple of our friends said the animals needed a home! As a group, we came up with the idea to paint our own safari. Mitchell painted the elephant, lion, and giraffes cage and Luke painted the birds cage. Luke also decided that it needed to be just like African Lion Safari. Once a few friends heard it was African Lion Safari, they came over right away to paint the water park and an ice cream shop!
