Summer Day Camp Blog

Mud Boot Naturalist

Ecology Camp, Week 4

This week was interesting, we sadly missed two days of camp due to flooding and unsafe conditions, but the days we had camp were stellar! We had a week of in-depth ecological studies of habitats. We experimented, explored, and became a wild scientists while turning nature into our study space. We explored many different ways to look at and learn about nature this week.

On Monday while it was super muddy and not very rainy we made mud creature homes! First we thought about what our mud creature would be, that way we knew how big to make the home. We made homes with mud, leaves, sticks, holes in the ground, etc. Later we discussed what traits some of our mud creature would have, like claws, tails, sharp teeth, slimy skin, long tongues, etc. We then used this ideas to draw out and make our mud creatures come to life. We also made mud creature necklaces too.

campers building mud creature homes
Building a mud creature village Photo: Audubon Vermont
home built with sticks and leaves
Photo: Audubon Vermont
camper building mud creature home
Mud creatures love their homes made of sticks! Photo: Audubon Vermont
mud creature home
Photo: Audubon Vermont

Thursday we played a camp favorite game, Life and Death in the Forest! We also went explore our woods and learned about some of the plants around us.

Friday we visited the Sherman Hollow Brook and tried to identify as many critters as possible. We also spent some time building a dam across the brook and watched how it change the water. We had to take down the dam to allow the water to flow and animals to travel. We ended our week with some worms in dirt dessert, we learned to weld from a CIT, and closing circle!

Students in the brook
Exploring the brook Photo: Audubon Vermont
ID guide and bin
Trying to ID what we caught Photo: Audubon Vermont
Students searching the brook
Searching under rocks for Critters Photo: Audubon Vermont
Student and CIT welding
Welding a leaf with our CIT Photo: Audubon Vermont

How you can help, right now