Mom Camp Day 4: Circus Day

Despite the ticket mix-up, we ended up going to the circus yesterday. The Captain actually had to leave on a business trip on Sunday afternoon, so I used the extra ticket for a friend of mine, Jillian.

Today, we followed up our trip to the circus with CIRCUS DAY! Now, I must confess, I do sometimes repeat mom camp theme days from previous years. Last year, the circus came to town in the summer and we went to the show and then had a mom camp circus day. When I told Cinco we were doing Circus Day again this year he was less than excited. He reminded me that last year for Circus Day I had the kids do circus acts. Cinco’s was the animal trainer. To be fair, I should have bought a hulahoop at the dollar store to have the “animals” jump through, but I didn’t. Instead, Cinco took some stuffed animals and threw them into a box. Yes, it was a little lame… This year, I am trying to make Circus Day a little better.

After breakfast, we started out easy with a collection of circus themed coloring pages. The kids got to pick the pages from a google search online and after the pages were colored in we put them together to make a circus book. A few of the best color pages were:

• A Design Your Own Clown Face from PBSKids.org
  
  

  Face by Cinco. It’s a bit scary, but then so are clowns–sometimes….

• Cute Hello Kitty Circus Pages
• The Strong Man from thecolor.com This site also had a number of other circus related pages that were very cute and the kids liked.

Next, it was time for a little work–not much–just a little. I found a cute set of circus themed math worksheets at TheHappyHousewife.com.

It is geared toward kids in 2nd-4th grade and Cinco (who just finished first grade) was able to do them without any problems. (hahah get it? problems– math problems?)

We also had to do some circus themed reading.
Cinco read The Circus Ship by Chris von Dusen. We read this last year for Circus Day as well. I simply adore it. It has beautiful illustrations and the story is written in rhyme which helps with children who need to improve their fluency. The story is a delightful tale about some circus animals who are shipwrecked and end up joining a small community living on an island in Maine. The author even provides an interesting historical note about his insperation for the story. Additionally, the author uses some great vocabulary words (bedraggled for example) that you can discuss with your kids to improve their own language acquisition.

For fun we also read Big Top Scooby Doo by Sonia Sander. It’s a pretty simple book and somewhat beneath Cinco’s reading level, but everyone loves Scooby Doo, right? The book is based on a cartoon movie by the same name– which we have already seen. It follows the typical Scooby Doo/Mystery Inc format.

Ellie the Elephant eats cotton candy while watching Dumbo!

After all this excitement and fun, it was time for a movie. I decided on the disney classic, Dumbo!

Last, but not least, we did a circus craft. As for a craft, Cinco came up with his own! The Princess LOVES cotton candy (personally, I cannot stand the stuff). So Cinco decided to make his own “cotton candy” for her. It is pretty simple:

Supplies:

1. Tissue Paper (Cinco insisted on pink, blue and yellow. Those are the color’s of last night’s cotton candy)
2. Toilet Paper Rolls

Steps:

1. Lay out the tissue paper.
2. Fold the four corners into the center of the paper

1. Stuff the four corners into the end of the toilet paper roll.
2. Enjoy fake cotton candy

We ended our Circus Day with a popcorn snack before heading off to swimming lessons.