This week, the kids and I are embarking on a survival science camp. We won’t face starvation or dehydration, but we’ll learn some wilderness survival skills and the scientific concepts behind them. You could put some of these ideas together and take a group of kids to a local park or nature center for a fun, educational field trip or birthday party!
We’re planning to learn about the best way to collect and purify water, how to figure out which way is North, how to build a shelter and stay warm, the art of making a whistle from an acorn and what really works for building a fire (with adult supervision, of course.) Along the way, we can talk about practical things- like what to do if you get lost.
We visited our library and checked out “STAY ALIVE- Survival Skills You Need” by John D. McCann for inspiration and information.
Today, we kicked things off by making a TRANSPIRATION bag, which is a solar still assembled using a clear oven bag, a twisty-tie, and a non-poisonous tree (like a maple.) I’ll write more about transpiration tomorrow, when we measure how much water we’ve collected! We read that in a sunny spot, you can collect between 1 and 2 cups a day.
The dog days of August are here. It’s hot and humid and summer sports and activities are coming to an end, which can only mean one thing: bored kids. I know that boredom is good and sparks creativity, but sometimes it’s nice to have an activity planned to break up the day.
My kids have nothing scheduled in the afternoons this week, so we’re going to do an impromptu science camp. It won’t be elaborate, well-planned or even all that time-consuming. We’ll just find a few easy projects that we can do using stuff we already have. (There will be no trips to the store to buys special ingredients.) It may be as simple as taking a walk to the park with notebooks to count how many different kinds of trees we can find. We’ll see what happens and I’ll report on what we do, beginning tomorrow!
Why not have a little science camp of your own, even just for an afternoon? There are lots of easy projects listed in my archives under chemistry, physics and biology. I’d love to hear what you tried!