Here I am at Camp Green: Students learn about environment at school
In its second year, the camp, held at Allen Elementary School and offered by the Ann Arbor School District’s Community Education and Recreation Department, introduces elementary-age students to green living.
Lesson topics include wind and solar energy, waste reduction, gardening and farming.
Gone are the lazy summer days of endless hours at the pool and making lanyards that were previously part of the district’s full-day summer camp.
“I inherited a summer camp that needed to be gone,” said Robin Schultz-Purves, the community education coordinator who oversees Green Adventures.
The camp also introduces children to healthy living. In place of cookies and candy snacks there are bountiful salads picked fresh from the program’s two gardens and graham cracks with a dollop of honey.
Research shows that students lose much of what they learn during the school year over the summer, and parents asked for an educational component in the full-day summer camp, she said. But they didn’t want to make it an extension of school.
Much of the day is spent outside, including field trips every afternoon.
Nature is the classroom, with trips to Saginaw Forest and Parker Mill. Even the Allen School playground became a classroom, with students wandering the clover-scented schoolyard on the look-out for honey bees. “We learn things about how to help our planet,” said student Alexjandro Derieux. 9, clipboard in hand, observing bees at work.
About 65 students per week have been attending the camp.
In addition to a small garden on the grounds of Allen School, students travel to the Raynor Farm north of Ann Arbor to tend a larger “fargen” - part farm and part garden, said Ryan Brown, director of Green Adventures. They grow buckwheat, gourds, tomatoes and more. Students and staff also built a bee house, complete with thousands of bees.
Photo by Janet Miller, Meila Foster takes notes on her clipboard and makes some sketches of the honey bee she is observing.