Art Meets Science: Day 1!

Welcome to week two of Art Meets Science! We welcomed a whole new set of campers today ready to explore, learn and create!

We started off our day with introductions learned about how important seeds are for helping plants to grow! We shared with our new friends our favorite type of seed. We had many campers who liked watermelon seeds, apple seeds and cherry seeds. We also listed many different types of plants or fruits that contain seeds!

Ms. Kim wrote down all of our favorites in our giant camp book, and then we examined seeds from a few natural items we had in our studio like pine cones as well as from things we eat, like oranges!

After our morning together time, we went on our first nature walk to find our own seeds and to collect natural materials to later investigate.

We found seeds growing on grass stalks, we saw bean pods, wild onions, and even a few wild strawberries with tiny seeds!

When we returned from our walk, we enjoyed a quick snack and water break then returned to our laboratory to get started on new experiments!

We took turns exploring the sights, scents, and other properties of various fruits and fruit juices mixed with watercolors. We quickly found that we could squeeze and mix the juices and create new colors as well as new smells!

Other campers used our always popular magic color wands and pipettes to do some color mixing of their own.

Several campers enjoyed building and engineering in our loose parts area or digging and investigating our fossil bin!

Campers also had the opportunity to decorate their own nature journals and sketch or display their nature walk collections inside!

*Habitat Building and our Cricket Farm*

While playing outside, several of our campers found a cricket and decided they wanted to build a house for it. Together they surveyed the materials in our yard and stacked our tires on top of each other to create a tall tower for the cricket to live inside. Then they put two wooden boards on the top of the stack to create a smaller opening.

Campers quickly began gathering grass, fallen leaves, flowers and other natural materials for the cricket's house. It was great to see everyone come together and create a hospitable place for the cricket to live.

One camper even exclaimed, "We need to find it more cricket friends and a girlfriend cricket!"

Our final experiment and exploration today included watercolor painting and using fresh lemon juice to create a reaction with the paints, which caused the juice to lighten some of the colors.

For our last group activity, we read a book together called Mix it Up! that helped teach us even more about color mixing! We even pretended to color mix paint in our hands while reading by squishing, patting, and spreading our imaginary colors around!