This past week the Phoenix Summer Adventure Kids went on adventures in the Salem Willows.
The theme of the week was Spies in the Wild, all about exploring how animals hide in nature.
Early in the morning, the kids started off by playing games to get ready for the day and finished each afternoon by visiting the beach and swimming together to round out their day.
On Monday they spent some time exploring the beach. They searched the beach for animal tracks, and each student drew the tracks in their journal. They made sure to pay good attention to how the tracks looked, so they could draw them and identify them later.
On Wednesday, the students had an adventure in the woods. The day’s activities were all about camouflage; the first thing the students did was each find an object in nature and attempt to camouflage it. They took their object and put it on a piece of paper, and using their art supplies they all drew backgrounds on the paper to try and hide the object in the background. After that, the kids created animal blinds to cover the lenses of cameras. The purpose of the blinds was to hide the camera (in this case the iPads) from animals, so they could record video of them. The kids were able to get a video of seagulls, as well as some video of robins using the iPad cameras.
On Friday the Phoenix Summer Adventure Kids continued their exploration of camouflage. For this activity, they each made their own creatures to hide in the woods. The kids got to choose whatever creature they wanted to make, real or fictional, and once they were all done they hid their creations along the trail. Afterward, the kids went back down the trail and all tried to find their fellow students’ creations. After they were done they all collected an item from the woods that they wanted to study. They took them back with them and they all used magnifying glasses and microscopes to look closely at the objects. While studying the objects the students all recorded what they saw by drawing it, to show what the objects looked like on a microscopic scale. At the end of the day on Friday, the kids reflected on the week’s adventures. Each kid thought back to their favorite moment of the week and drew that moment to record it.
