Welcome To Camp Learn-A-Lot!

Camp Learn-A-Lot was my first classroom flip of the 2017-2018 school year! My students and I had a blast and I know this was a week they will never forget. If you are looking to create magic in your classroom, keep reading for tips on how to make Camp Learn-A-Lot a success for your students!

The focus and goal of this room transformation was to build student engagement. My goal as a teacher is to make my students believe that school is a place they WANT to be not HAVE to be. Their faces when they walked in made all the hard work completely worth it.

You are going to need a few things to make this happen. Below is a list of things I used. I strongly encourage you to ask parents/family/friends for donations! Majority of what I used I borrowed- creating magic does not mean burning all your cash!

- Tent
- Flashlights
- Checkered Table Covers
- Black Tarps (I used 10 ft x 24 ft)
- Fake Christmas Trees
- Butcher paper/paint for Camp Sign
- Camping Chairs
- Fake Campire (Amazon)
- Camping Gear (coolers, dishes, picnic basket, etc.)

Be sure to go all out to set the stage to engage! I came dressed each day as a camp counselor decked out in camo, sunglasses, whistle and walking stick. To really make it feel like we were in the great outdoors, I played nature sounds (YouTube) when they walked in each morning. 

I kept this transformation up for an entire week. Below are a few things we did as campers for the week:

- Reader's theatre using a camping play found on Teachers Pay Teachers

- Team building activities

- Camper's math (just our regular math plans but the practice problems were posted all around the room and campers had to 'walk the woods' to find the problems)

- Creative writing- my students used Miss 5th's Emoji Writing Prompts and shared their writing with their cabin teams

- Flashlight reading

- LOTS of read aloud time- I read them a different picture book each day in addition to our read aloud 

- Camp songs: we learned new songs for skip counting and grammar and performed them in our cabin teams 

- Smores and 'Where The Red Fern Grows' movie (we had just finished the book)

Basically anything that you would normally have planned for the week, just find a way to put a camping twist on it! Remember to keep it heavily academic- room transformations should enhance learning, not take away from it. 

What got my students most excited was being divided into cabins. If you know anything about the Ron Clark Academy, you know that they have a house system in which each student belongs to a different house that stands for a different value. I have always wanted to implement a house system in my classroom so I figured Camp Learn-A-Lot would be the perfect time to try it out! These cabins were their teams for the whole week, and I required them to do everything together- even sit by each other at lunch. My students successfully worked together to earn points for their cabin. It was incredible what new friendships I saw being created!

Below are a few more pictures of my transformation. Hopefully I have inspired you to create magic in your classroom! Happy camping!