How I spent my summer vacation

Hello, and welcome back to your new classrooms! This was big week for all of us at TLS. Each and every child came back to new rooms, new friends, and new teachers. Many teachers welcomed new co-workers and even new rooms. It is a lot to take in, especially when you’re only 2 feet tall. All in all, the children did super adjusting to their new worlds.

This is the first time we moved all the children to a new room at the same time. The teachers have reported loving it, and the buzz made it exciting for the kids. One of the reasons we have never attempted this feat in the past is because we didn’t want to displace our rising kindergarteners over the summer. It felt like we were saying: “Good luck! We love you! See ya!” No way did we want to do that to our K bound kiddos. So this year we are experimenting with “summer camp”. Offered to these rising kindergarteners only, we have just finished our first week of extra fun, extra woodsey, extra muddy, extra exploring, extra wet, extra painty, and extra wormy summer play. We asked our campers to help us name our first session of camp. Suggestions included:

- Camp Fire
- Camp Snake Fire
- Camp Monster Fire
- Camp Bug Fire
- Camp Ultimate Fire
- Camp Magic Rainbow (can you guess if we had more girls or boys?)    
                                                                                                                                                        
As awesome as “Camp Snake Fire sounds” to a 5 year old boy, we decided it maybe was too scary for non-camp civilians. We all decided to go with “Camp Ultimate...” and let the children fill in the blank. “Camp Ultimate Hiking”, “Camp Ultimate Water Play”, etc.

Backpacks loaded, and water shoes at the ready, we explored our woods, swung from vines, sloshed in creeks, and squished in mud. We set-up a tent at the creek bed, and let nature (and extremely awesome teachers) do the rest. We cooled off inside with epic lego creations, daily journaling, Geronimo Stilton books in our sleeping bags, and and of course Chef Nate lunches.

Thanks “campers” for reminding us how to do summer the ultimate way. You may ask, “Didn’t it rain all last week?”

Pfft. Not a problem if you’re ULTIMATE.