I thought long and hard about how to include an animal theme as a backyard summer camp. We are an animal-loving family and we are surrounded by animals even without thinking about pets. Animals are everywhere outside. Here is what I came up with.
Backyard Summer Camp: Animal Camp
This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.
I think this week might be more suited to a week when you have rain in the forecast.
I don’t believe that we should have our kids scheduled for every minute of every day. My kids don’t expect me to entertain them. I’m pretty sure that the only time they tell me that they are bored and expect me to entertain them is because I am doing something very exciting, like cleaning a toilet. Yes, apparently that is my kids’ idea of a fun time.
Animal Activities
I do like the idea of fun activities that we can do together periodically throughout the week with a theme.
How Animals Stay Warm in the Arctic – We learned how they live in the cold, how they survive the freezing cold temperatures. Considering my oldest likes to sit down and watch animal documentaries, she loves what we are learning right now.
Plus icy cold water play is a great way to cool down in the summer.
Make Bird Feeders – We got to make some bird feeders for all the birds taking up residence in our yard.
Learn about how animals stay warm in the Arctic – This is a fun way to cold down after spending time outside in the summer heat. Learn how they stay warm, and then cool down with freezing cold, arctic, water.
Bug Watching – While weeding/shoveling the weeds out of our neglected flower beds we saw a LOT of bugs. I am not a bug girl, but I managed to hold my girlie screams in and point them out to my kids.
Lift a rock and check out what is living under there. Or sit near some flowers and watch the happenings for a bit. I just installed an app called iNatualist onto my phone, which you can use to identify plants, insects, and other animals.
Animal Yoga – This one might be a little tricky to do outside but, Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube has awesome animal-themed yoga. If you know yoga, you might not even need to watch something to get going. OR maybe just do some animal movements to stretch your bodies and burn off some energy.
Elephant Toothpaste – We haven’t done this in years which is why it is going to be great this summer. It’s a fun chemical reaction.
Shark Buoyancy – Another water science activity. Learn how sharks float, or sink, in the ocean. And cool down with the water before and after because it’s summer and that’s what summer is about here, fun with water.
We can learn so much from having pets of any kind. We have a lot of pets, we have had some different ones over the years, like a crested gecko. It is not our favorite kind of pet, but still cool and we learned a lot from that experience.
More Summer Camp Ideas
Sign Up Here to Get Access to Subscriber Freebies
