Summer Activities in the Library: Racing Around the World

So this week was my 2nd Wednesday of my "Summer in the Library" activities.  This is my 2nd year doing this program.  Last year, I skipped around days, not sure what day would be popular (and trying to fit everyone's schedule).  This year, I decided on Wednesdays, came up with some new themes, repeated a favorite (Minecraft), and voila!  here I am!

Because my summer life isn't as relaxing and time free as I wished, (massive house cleaning and ridding out things going on at home!), I'm blogging about my first two Wednesdays that already passed.  But, to give you a peek at what I'm talking about, this is the schedule I sent home with parents, advertise on Facebook, have on the school calendar, and when I can, the school Facebook page.  Note that I invite all - all ages, not necessarily have to be a student and, because where I live/work, we are surrounded by different counties, not necessarily a student in our district!  That way, it's also open to homeschooling families, cousins, family, neighbors, etc.  I've gotten a pretty good response so far, despite vacations, swim lessons, Vacation Bible School, Summer School, etc.

I saw the idea of an Amazing Race:  Library Edition from a public library and ran with it!  Because of size limitations, abilities, resources, etc, I adapted it to my school library.  I decided to go with continents, rather than countries/cities.  I also wasn't sure how long it would take each person to complete each task (it took about an hour for everyone to go "around the world" except for a few who wanted to go around and do it again).  Like the TV reality show, there were "Roadblocks" where you had to do the task and "Detours" where you had a choice.  I got very favorable feedback from kids (I even had some high school kids come!) and parents.  

Here are a few pictures from the day:

Africa:  Roadblock!  Students learned how to play Mancala and then created their own from egg cartons to take home and play!

North America:  Detour:  Match pictures of landmarks to their names OR create a family/personal totem (the papers explain what each animal represents), and they cut those out and glued to wood paint sticks

Asia:  Detour:  Create an origami butterfly OR using instruction sheets, learn to write in Chinese characters

Antarctica:  Detour:  Learn about penguins from a short video and then put them in order from smallest to largest OR migrate with the arctic tern (draw the migration route and then "fly" around the room/route)

South America:  Roadblock:  Students created a Mayan temple using wooden blocks (the Jenga pieces were perfect for this!) 

Creating totems

Chinese Writing (papers from Education.com)

Creating Mancala games

Mayan temple

Migrating with the Arctic Tern

Playing and creating Mancala in Africa

Mayan temple:

2 more Mayan temples (they loved I kept taking pictures!)

If you're interested in seeing more, click {here} for TPT and {here} for Teachers Notebook.