Construction, Cars, and Trucks on the Go!

Today's camp lessons were inspired by the book DIG! by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha. The book is about a busy day on the job with Mr. Rally, a construction worker who drives a backhoe.  At each of his five jobs in the book, he sings a song about digging.  The Chatty Caterpillars learned his song during morning circle, before heading outside.

On the playground, it was a good day for practicing turn-taking on the slide...

sharing sand with our classmates...

and making new friends with other classes on the jungle gym.

Back inside for language circle, we read about Mr. Rally completing five jobs with his backhoe, and the Caterpillars sang his digging song for each task.

Campers then used their hands to demonstrate how Mr. Rally's backhoe can scoop, dig, and lift, while the dozer on the front can push.  We matched these verbs to the part of the truck that can do them.

Our science experiment today was about how different surfaces affect how a car travels.  Using pieces of colored paper as our measuring system, we asked the question "How far will the car go?" on the table, through a pile of oatmeal, on the table with water, and on the carpet.  Each camper took a turn sending the car down the ramp.

After some tricky predictions and a fun experiment, we discovered that the car did not make it past the first piece of paper when it went through the oatmeal.  When it traveled through water, it rolled all the way off the table.  The car was able to go farther on the surface of the table than on the carpet.  The experiment showed how a car can travel more easily on smooth surfaces than rough ones.  

Speaking of traveling on surfaces, a toy truck makes a great tool for painting!  Campers took turns using a toy dump truck, cement mixer, and bulldozer to drive paint across their paper.  

Discovering the tracks left by the trucks and how they changed with different amounts of paint was super-fun!

At Center Time today, campers enjoyed this same tire track phenomenon with shaving cream and some trucks with different tire treads.

They also enjoyed playing together with toy cars on the ramp that was used for our science experiment.

To wrap up the day we sang a few of our favorite songs, as well "Rowing" and "Down by the Station," two of our special songs for the week.  Be looking forward to hearing all about bicycles tomorrow!