In the Director's e-News will be weekly updates on the happenings at Green Adventures Camp.  This section of our website along with the Classroom links, Out in the Field link, and photos section will provide a good insight on what campers and staff have been up to.

An Intro to Our Home and Our Gardens

Week 1 (A Worm's Eye View)

Week 2 (Hive to Honey Jar)

Week 3 (Green Camp Rocks!)

Week 4 ("Do Over")

Week 5 (City Critters)

Week 6 (Bats, Butterflies, and Hummingbirds)

Week 6 (Bats, Butterflies, and Hummingbirds)

Some of the highlights this week included:

Enjoyed a fabulous bat pollinated fruit salad produced by an all camp assembly line.
Went to Tantre Farm in Chelsea.
The Organization for Bat Conservation came to GAC with Bats!
Built and painted two bat houses.
Pulled weeds from the Lakewood Butterfly Garden.
Our Monarch Butterfly came out of its chrysalis and was released.
Jeff and Mary made Fried Green Tomatoes and all enjoyed.
Went to Raynor Farm.
---Harvested Eggplant, Green Tomatoes, Onions, Squash, Kohlrabi, Greens.
---Cooked fresh produce over a campfire.
---Took a look in our bee hives.
Extracted honey out of 6 frames from our bees. Each camper took home a small bottle.
Watched a PBS special "Magic in the Air" about hummingbird flight.
Made bird houses from Raynor Farm gourds.
Campers enjoyed plenty of interaction with our GAC chicks all week long.
Wrote a Green Adventures Camp song with Joe Reilly.
Enjoyed a performance by Joe Reilly!

Week 5 (City Critters)

Some of the highlights this week included:

Jane’s class made city critter habitats and critters out of clay and natural materials.
Will’s class invented their own city critters complete with unique city life adaptations.
Visit to Botsford Recreation Preserve.
---Nature hike with tree house journaling.
---Played Space Ball and had fun learning trampoline safety.
Visit to Barton Nature Park for city critter hike.
Laughed and laughed while being introduced to some amazing animals by Paul McCormack.
Looked at study skins of Michigan animals including raccoon, red fox, deer, beaver, muskrat.
Enjoyed plenty of interaction with our GAC chicks all week long.
Visit to Raynor Farm.
---Checked our bee hives.
---Harvested kolrabi, sugar snap peas, squash, and greens
---Cooked fresh produce on campfire.
Had a blast swimming at Vets pool!

Week 4 ("Do Over")

Some of the highlights of this week include:

The Great Egg Drop Project (focus on protecting an egg being dropped from 40+ ft using minimal/bio-degradeable materials)
The Junk Project:
---Deconstruction of found items
---Engineering project with deconstructed materials
Lakewood School litter removal
Trip to Ann Arbor’s Materials Recovery Facility
Watched the movie Wall-E
Trip to 3 stores:
---Bgreen store (focus on green, eco friendly materials and products)
---PTO Thrift Shop (focus on where to take/buy donated items)
---Salvation Army (focus on where to take/buy donated items)
Swimming at Vets Pool

Week 3 (Green Camp Rocks!)

I am so fascinated with kids fascination with rocks.  Right away campers showed a seemingly innate connection to our theme this week.  No matter what we did with rocks this week the campers were into it.

At the beginning of the week I checked in on Jane’s class web page to see details of what might be going on in the classrooms.  Jane teaches our youngest campers and when I was on her page I thought, “wow Jane is giving her kids an Intro to Geology college class the week”.  And really that’s what it was at camp this week.  Taking them to an active gravel pit near Waterloo Recreation Area was amazing.  Campers found an amazing collection of all types of rocks including some absolutely beautiful fossils.  On the bus ride home I heard campers tossing around, in conversation, vocabulary words like sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic, intrusive, extrusive, etc.  With our gravel pit collection campers cleaned, cut, and polished rocks using various different techniques taught by both Dave and John

Some of the highlights of this week include:

-Visit to active gravel pit near Waterloo Recreation Area.
-Visit to former inactive gravel pit in Dolph Nature Area.
-Cut and polished rocks.
-Made 3-D clay model earth representing the core, outer core, and mantle (Jane’s class).
-Volcano eruption activity with seltzer water (Will’s class).
-Crystal growth experiment.
-Made Metamorphic Munchies.
-Visit to Raynor Farm.
---Checked our bee hives.
---Planted onions.
---Harvested peas and green tomatoes.
---Cooked kolrabi, sugar snap peas, and greens on campfire.
-Had a blast swimming at Vets pool!

Week 2 (Hive to Honey Jar)

Some of the many highlights this week: Photos can be found here.

-Made paper models of bees to learn about the Rule of 6 (Bee Anatomy).
-Watched Reading Rainbow video on Bees and Bee Keeping.
-Played cooperative pollination game.
-Stewardship activity (Restoring Lakewood’s Butterfly Garden).
-Planted Sunflowers in Butterfly Garden.
-Walk through Lakewood neighborhood looking at the different flowers in gardens and searching for pollinators.
-Walk through lakewood woods in search of wild flowers and pollinators.
-Field Trip to Matthaei Botanical Gardens where docents led campers through their conservatory and children’s garden.
-Made and ate an inverted muffin which we called “bee hives”.
-Dissected flowers and learned about all the flower parts.
-Bee role playing. Campers got in pairs and one camper played the role of a nursingbee while the other camper played the role of the larva. Very cute to watch!
-Bee safety in preparation for the trip to our bee hives.
-Visit to Raynor Farm where campers participated in the following activities:
---Bee Hive experience.
---Chopping old potatoes and planting them.
---Campfire cooking.
-Had a blast swimming at Vets Pool!

Week 1 (A Worm's Eye View)

I am always amazed at how quick our staff at GAC get the campers into activities with active hands on learning.  This year was no exception.  As I came out of our camp office our entire meeting area in the main camp room was covered in compost soil.  On the tables, on the floor, and on campers hands.  They we’re searching for worms and having a blast.  I am always looking for “wow” moments at camp and it was wonderful how fast we were able to get one this year.  It’s not often kids are covering a room at school in dirt.  What also stood out to me was the cooperation and team building that was shared between campers and staff for clean up.  That’s another thing I am always looking for and attempting to cultivate at GAC, a culture of “cooperation”.

Some of the many highlights this week:

-"Worm grunting" with Dave.
-Painted crops signs for our garden inside Raynor Farm.
-Visit to Food Gatherer’s and Olson Pond.
-Food investigating at Kroger.
-Cooked and ate delicious food that was prepared by campers. Recipes are here.
---Green Eggs
---Dirt Desserts
---Strawberry Fruit Leathers (strawberries from our Lakewood Garden)
---Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp (strawberries and rhubarb from our Lakewood Garden)
---Chive Dip (chives from our Lakewood Garden)
-Our return to the GAC farm at Raynor’s.
---Took a look inside one of our five bee hives.
---Built and placed our crop signs inside our garden.
---Chopped and planted potatoes.

An Intro to Our Home and Our Gardens

I am very excited about our return home for Green Adventures Camp this summer.  Lakewood Elementary offers us tremendous opportunities for environmental education.  In addition to our onsite Project Grow garden we will be exploring, regularly right outside of our doors, Lakewood Woods, and Dolph Nature Area.

Again this summer GAC campers will spend time tending and learning from our onsite Project Grow garden. And as we did last year we started the garden with the help of Lakewood graduating 4th grade students.  Those same students will return as 5th graders and take over as caretakers of the garden after GAC is all done.  Please visit it whenever you like.  Ask a staff member and they can show you where it is.

In 2009 we began what has become an extraordinary project for GAC.  And this year it gets better.  Dave Szczygiel and the GAC volunteers corps have been at it and havethe garden at Raynor’s Farm ready for our weekly visits. 

Both gardens will give campers excellent opportunities to get their hands and feet in the dirt and truly experience a living outdoor classroom.  Learning about our gardens will provide hands-on math, science, cooking and life skill lessons.  Plans for the fresh produce are to use them in our snacks, send some home with families, donate to Food Gatherers.  And now, with the coordination of the "Farm to Table" program in AAPS and Chartwells, there is a large possibility that our produce will be served during lunch at many AAPS schools.

Other important news is the continuation of our “Zero Waste Campaign” for snacks and lunches.  We hope families jump on board and send campers to our camp, other camps, and back to school with a “Zero Waste” lunch.

My hope is that not only the campers will get to know GAC at Lakewood well but also their families.  I encourage whenever families have the time to explore our camp environment.  For most families they just see our main camp room where they drop off and pick up their children.  Families can always feel free to ask their children to show them where our classrooms are.  This area is located in Centrum A of Lakewood, just down the hall from our main camp room.  The classrooms have a lot going on inside them and is a great place for campers to remember and talk about what they have been up to.  Also in the centrum are display areas of experiments/projects campers are working on as well as interesting things that they have been found in the field.