Summer camps are wonderful times of adventure, learning, exploration, and making lifelong memories and friends. It’s also a great place to focus on environmental activities for kids.
How To Find An Eco-Friendly Summer Camp In Your Area
- College Camps: Check with your local universities. Many of them offer environmental summer camps with day camps, overnight camping trips, and summer expeditions for teens.
- Organization Camps: Your local environmental organizations usually offer camps for kids such as the National Audubon Society.
- YMCA has many locations that provide environmental summer camps for kids.
Community Activities To Do In Your Neighborhood To Help The Environment
This guide lists in detail eco-friendly activities that anyone, families, or summer camp participants can engage in. It’s a practical outline of environmental activities for kids, such as how to:
- Start an eco-club.
- Organize a trash pickup.
- Join or start a community garden.
- Hold a clothing swap.
Environmental Stewardship Activities For Kids
This guide outlines learning responsibility in sustainable practices, and how to protect the environment and the ecosystem. They learn things like:
- How to care for nature.
- How to upcycle.
- Different ways to volunteer.
- How to garden and compost.
- How to affect change by writing letters.
Eco-Friendly Summer Camp Ideas for Kids
Running your own kids’ summer camp? Well here are tons of eco-friendly environmental activities for kids to do, learn, and explore this summer. Outdoors and summer practically go hand in hand. It’s the time to break free of the classroom and get out into nature.
OUTDOORS
Hiking
Group hikes allow kids to learn how to prepare for a long hike, about different terrains, navigation, safety, and companionship. AllTrails will help you find kid-friendly hikes in your area.
Hunting
When hunting is part of environmental activities for kids it’s and it’s eco-friendly then it means a scavenger hunt! Kids especially learn problem-solving skills. You can make a scavenger list of environmental-related items that educate as well as provide fun.
Picnics
Enjoying, learning, and appreciating food is always a worthwhile and absolutely fun activity everyone loves. Campers can bring their lunch, or make it a potluck affair to share with everyone. If you have a community garden nearby they can ask to forge some food there too.
Stargazing
Learning about the universe and outer space can open up a whole new world for campers while at the same time they further appreciate the vastness of our environment. Stargazing is at the top of the list of eco-friendly summer camp ideas for kids. Take advantage of the warm evening weather and do some interstellar viewing. Constellations, star patterns, how stars move in the sky with the seasons, and maybe even a summer meteor shower are all on the menu. Here is a guide to stargazing while camping.
CREATIVE ACTIVITIES
Tapping into creative environmental activities for kids is one of the best ways to allow them to express their personalities, and explore new artistic expressions.
Art Journaling
A blank book is a creative canvass for kids to let loose with no rules. Giving them prompts related to your eco-friendly environmental activities for kids during summer camp is all they need to get going. Scrapbooking captures memories, thoughts, new art techniques (collages from recycled magazines for example), and even actual flora material they might collect on hiking trips (leaves, pressed flowers).
Tie-Dying
To turn this into one of the environmental activities for kids you can do this summer, it will mean taking the time to make your own natural fabric dyes. Besides clothing, they can also dye pillowcases, blankets, and reusable cotton bags.
Eco-Friendly Painting
Go the eco-friendly route by teaching kids of any age how to use their fingers, hands, and fruits and vegetables as painting tools. Younger kids can learn about shapes; older kids can learn how to create in images using pointillism techniques.
Collage
To get the whole group involved, go big! Choose poster-sized paper or an available wall in a classroom for a theme-related art collage. Turn it into one of the environmental activities for kids by choosing an eco-related subject matter.
Talent Show
Acting, art, creativity, and fun all around. Talent shows are perfect outlets for individuals and groups to get to showcase their passions and personal talents. Giving out small prizes to everyone who participates will encourage involvement.
Life-Sized Board Games
This is one environmental activities for kids that many may not have been part of yet. Going this big will undoubtedly create memories that will last a lifetime. Follow these guidelines to literally insert players into the game.
INTERESTING INDOOR ACTIVITIES
DIY Pizza Party
Unfortunately, home ec is no longer one of the basic classes taught in schools, thus many kids grow up never learning about nutrition and how to cook for themselves. Learning how to make healthy alternatives to one of life’s favorite foods is a fun summer activity. Get a list of campers favorite toppings to make it extra special.
- Try out a few different crust ideas, from GF to homemade dough, to even vegetarian with a cauliflower base.
- Make pizza sauce from scratch. Bonus if you can harvest the ingredients from a local garden or farmers market.
Indoor Tents
Rainy or bad weather day? Turn your summer camp local into the land of tents and fortresses. Take it to the next level and allow kids to bring in personal accents, fairy lights, pillows, books, snacks, and anything that makes for an extra special hideaway.
Use chairs, books, and blankets to create an indoor tent for kids to enjoy some downtime, reading, writing, etc.
Storytelling Jar
Have everyone in camp write down a story plot or some prompts that might get the creative juices flowing to start a fantastical story journey. At the 100% degree of environmental activities for kids level, this is a fun way to foster creativity and get everyone involved.
Mask Making
Masks have been made by all cultures throughout time. It is a way to be hidden and occupy a new identity at the same time. It’s a very creative way for kids to express themselves as well as being an environmental activities for kids that they will most likely all enjoy.
- Take some time to find mask resources from different cultures to show the kids.
- Use found and recycled material for mask making.
- There are literally hundreds of sites on the internet for ideas.
- Easiest to choose a theme: animals, tribal, or nature-related for example.
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