Incorporating Themes - Polar Animals Theme

Yesterday, I shared with you our Weekly Program Guides, but what I didn't really talk too much about are our monthly themes and our focus life principle. I'll go into the life principles in a later post, but today I want to talk about one of my absolute favorite things - themes! 

I love, love, love themes! I've been writing theme units since my own kids were in their preschool years (which was longer ago than I care to admit), even though back then I had no idea I was writing theme units - I was simply putting together fun and educational activities with different children's books that my kiddos would pick out during our biweekly library trips. Fast forward twenty-or-so years (yikes!) and here we are. I've written themes for years to include the traditional, educational elements, but now as I write them for our club kids I'm also integrating often over-looked (but super important) life skills.

The first theme that we're doing at the club (that isn't part of one of our breaks) is over Polar Animals. We're keeping our themes for a few weeks (because I'm ambitious, but not crazy) and because I want our kids to have a chance to explore each theme without feeling completely overloaded - this is supposed to be fun, not draining.

So, for our first theme, I'm breaking the Polar Animals into two categories, Arctic and Antarctic. I want to do this for ease of incorporation, but also so that the kids learn that there is a big difference in the areas geographically as well as zoologically. 

When you decide to start working with themes, there are a lot of things you can do that will help add to the feel around your club with very little effort. For example, try naming your groups with names that go along with the theme. When we use themes for breaks, we always use theme specific names for the groups. Here are some group names I've come up with to go along with our theme:

Gnarly Narwhals
Silly Seals
Optimistic Orcas
Brilliant Belugas
Peppy Polar Bears
Peckish Puffins
Lucky Lemmings
Happy Huskies
Wacky Walruses

Another great way to add to the feel of themes without having to change anything in your regular program day is to find theme related activities for project learn and for triple play. We will be incorporating a lot of theme-friendly fun over the course of this theme that make the kids excited to learn new games and try new activities.

It's also easy to adapt games your kids probably already play. For example, sharks and minnows can easily become seals and minnows and dodge ball can become a snowball fight. Snack ideas can be adapted as well. Our kids love polar bear pudding (which is just a vanilla pudding cup with some flaked coconut stirred in) and glacial goodness (made like a root beer float but with blue kool-aid). 

Do you use themes in your club setting? Do you have fun ideas to share? Let me know!