Special summer activities at daycare (esp older kids)

[AmyRI]

Our daycare center is looking for special activities they can do in the summer, especially for the elementary school age kids that are only there in the summer.

In the past, they had an egg incubator and eggs loaned to them from a local farm and they would watch them hatch and raise the chicks before they went back to the farm. Well, they usually had an 80% percent success rate with the eggs, but last year less than half hatched and 2 had serious birth defects and didn't survive     They're not willing to take the chance again this year since it was obviously upsetting to the young kids.

It doesn't have to be nature related, but they'd like it to be a longer-duration type event than just hiring a magician for a few hours.

I saw Brie mention an ice cream truck coming weekly, and that seems like a great idea! They already do water play 2x per week and plant gardens. I'm at a loss.

[Brie]

Yeah, the weekly ice cream truck is really popular for obvious reasons, but they also use it as a lesson to teach the older kids how to pay for something and get change.

The local library comes weekly and all the kids get to participate in the Summer Reading Program that way, which I think is great. They earn fake money that can be used for prizes at the library.

Other one-day events they have are a petting zoo visit, water play Fridays, and a field trip to a local minor league baseball game.

[dcrunnergirl52]

Most of the daycares/preschools/summer camps around here have a rotation of folks that come through: there's a reptile show (reptiles alive!), petting zoo, chef, magician, science experiment guy, books on wheels, etc. Our preschool last year also did weeks with the theme summer olympics, camping, bicycle rally (kids got to bring tricycles and bikes to school), etc. I'll try to see if I can remember the others.

[mrsnole]

Do you have any Mad Science type places there? Or maybe even any Lego/Robotics type places.

[oceanstbride]

Does Save The Bay have any summer education programs? Or educators that can come to the daycare? Disclaimer: I haven't lived in RI for 5 years so they may not do this anymore.

Also nature related, I remember Matunuck Oyster Co. having some sort of tour/kids thing for their oyster farm.

[schrodinger]

Berry picking, local farms, kid's theater, state/county fair. Plus the usual local parks, water parks, pools.

[Deleted]

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