Our camps foster children's curiosity by not only exploring materials and ideas but also exploring our neighborhood. We believe that children learn though experience, coming to their own conclusions through interactions with their world around them. Our Camp Flaming Arrow is an interpretation of a traditional sleep-out camp. By hiking through the neighborhood, using camping journals, having picnics and doing specimen collecting for art projects sparks enthusiasm in the children for learning, as well as, for our neighborhood communities.
Lunch Picnics are a wonderful time for collaboration, sharing and exchanging ideas in playing together. There was a lot of singing, collecting of flowers and plants, hiding and climbing.
On the first day of camp the kids made writing implements to aid them in their journal writing by putting paper maché around a pen. Carrots always seem to me a celebration of spring so it seemed liked the obvious choice. We put together field journals for the children of things one might find in the neighborhood if you looked closely. Looking is such an important part of art making, looking and having an awareness of your surroundings.
Some of the kids drew and wrote about what they saw. The younger kids took the initiative to just draw other things of interest they found, negating the scavenger hunt all together. The discovery of finding different shapes of leaves, small and big and drawing them was such a valuable experience for them.
Happy Looking!!!
