What I Learned at Summer Science Camp

Nature Culinary Creations

Here in Downers Grove summer is over. Yesterday I watched the children walk down the sidewalk to the first day of school. Before they are forgotten, I want to jot down memories and thoughts from my time with children at the Morton Arboretum, Summer Science Camp.

Though exhausting, it is my joy to spend eight weeks with young children (4 - 8 years) exploring nature, pretending, playing games, making art. I t is an opportunity to carry on George’s legacy of encouraging children to love the natural world. Here’s a visual tour of some of our experiences….

Time at the Mud Kitchen has no agenda, no goals, only open-ended play.

Currency to pay for the imaginative creations!

A morning of landscape water color painting.

Close up with a Great Blue Heron - They could see that this big bird was a tall as them.

Building Fairy Houses - STEM engineering.

The last day of each camp I bring out my 30 year old tattered copy of , “Miss Rumphius”, to read to the children as they eat their morning snack. Miss Rumphius has been instructed by her grandfather that it is important to do something to make the world a more beautiful place. And in the end she, of course, realizes that goal. As I finished reading the book - it was my last week of camp for the summer - one of the children asked me, “What have you done, Mrs Debbie, to make the world a more beautiful place?” Oh my!! I hope that allowing the magic of nature to enter into these children’s hearts will have made the world a more beautiful place.