Connect a child to Nature through a Week of Camp!

When you think of nature camp and outdoor exploring, summer is usually the time of year that comes to mind. Other seasons have unique advantages when it comes to nature connection, though, and here at Piedmont Wildlife Center, we have been running week-long camps through the fall and winter. This week, our mammal-themed Foxwalker camp has inspired amazing learning and curiosity in our campers.

We started the week out with typical winter weather for North Carolina: cool and rainy. But spending some time indoors didn’t hold our campers back from nature exploration. We dug into our collection of nature museum artifacts to see how many mammals there are in our state, and how different they can be! The kids studied pelts, bones, and plaster casts of animal tracks so that they would be prepared to spot any sign of mammals on our tracking adventure hikes when the rain ended. Even the younger kids, like Merrit, loved drawing the different mammal paw print shapes into their mini-journals.

It’s clear that the learning games, challenges, and lessons that campers had earlier in the week expanded their knowledge of wildlife and made them eager to learn more. Since the rain stopped, the kids have been applying their new knowledge out in the field! The campers have found, followed, and identified tracks all over the park, including squirrel, deer, and fox tracks. It was rewarding to see Merrit’s interest in an excellent set of squirrel tracks. He identified them correctly, and wasn’t even confused by the different shapes of the front and back paws. It was a big achievement, since he started the week by guessing that every track we looked at was from a house cat!

The campers have realized that even though lots of mammals are secretive and hard to spot, there are signs of them all around for us to learn from. Without your support, though, these adventures and discoveries wouldn’t be possible. If they weren’t here at camp, most of these children would be spending their winter break indoors. “I’d probably be on video games all day,” Deirdre admitted. “Being here is better. I’d prefer to be here the entire break!”

Your generosity makes a huge difference for these children. Thank you for giving them one of the best gifts of the holiday season—the gift of an incredible outdoor experience!

Links:

• Piedmont Wildlife Center Winter camps