We did summer camp at home

In order to keep summer interesting, we decided to do summer camp at home. But what and how to do it?
In comes the Internet and Pinterest. Google search at home summer camps and tons of ideas come our way.
After reading and viewing some ideas, I decided a theme of "Space" be fun.
I liked the idea of keeping it simple and creative, while learning in the process. Being a homeschool family, we are always trying to squeeze learning into everything we do.
So, not putting pressure on ourselves to try to meet a daily agenda made it more fun. Then we could go at our own pace.
We had a rough schedule for everyday. Read a book, make a craft, watch a video and play some review trivia games. All of it about Space.
Threw a makeshift Bulletin Board together, requested books and movies from the library, bookmarked the best websites for Space Camp ideas and viola ready for our camp.
Here are some of the websites I used for ideas: http://m.parenting.com/article/summer-camp-at-home?page=0,2#bmb=1

http://www.thecraftyclassroom.com/ThemeSpaceCrafts.html

http://m.hubblesite.org/#_home
We looked at pictures from space. Which were super impressive. Check out the Nat geo website's photo gallery of the Hubble telescope http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/photogalleries/100424-hubble-telescope-20th-anniversary-pictures/
Plus, we found NASA has an app to view photos from space probes they have sending pictures back. Some of the Nebula pictures are amazing. We loved the pictures of Saturn and the panoramic landscape shot from Mars
We are excited for Aug 6 to see the new Mars rover,Curiosity, land.
We started by making the Hubble telescope, after we looked up information about it on the Internet. We read about its mission, it's launch, reason it was named Hubble an we saw pictures, both of it and from it.
Next, we started to read a book called "I Wonder Why Stars Twinkle?". We read a small portion of it over the next three days. After reading about the three types of galaxies, we decided to make a spiral galaxy.
Over the next few days, we made elliptical and irregular galaxies, hung the solar system from the ceiling, learned the phases of the moon, distances from the sun to each planet, drew our own aliens, made our own solar systems out of art supplies lying around, learned about stars, chalked our own stars from hottest to dwarf, ate an astronaut dinner, learned out the international space station, made an international space station, watched movies galore, viewed a ton of space photos, learned about launches and missions, weighted ourselves on other planets, ate black holes for breakfast, ate Milky Ways with lunch, talked about Dr. Who, made star cookies and read some great books from the Library.
Whew, that was a lot!
I think I may have learned more than the kids!
Great stuff!
Next week we start Animals, but will be closer to 3 weeks to finish.
Since there is so much, and I didn't do our Space weeks justice, I will try to post everyday during Animal unit study.
Maybe that way I can get everything covered.