Today is the day I become a beautiful butterfly!! At first when a butterfly comes out their wings are soft but as soon as blood pumps into their wings they are ready to fly.
We went to the garden today to see the bees pollination in progress. Bees like to drink the nectar at the bottom of the flower and get pollen on their legs, by touching the anthers, from this process. When they travel to a different flower the pollen goes into the pistil and pollinates the flower. Bees have sacs on their hind legs where they store the pollen as they carry it back to their hive. Someone asked why pollen is yellow and we found out it is because for protection from UV-B rays, the same flavonoids that can be found in citrus fruits.
We went to learn about the animals this morning. We touched the sheep and felt the lanolin in their wool. The lanolin is an oily substance on their wool that protects them from bugs and other stuff from getting too tangled in their wool. In the pasture, we learned why we don’t push or rub the goats heads. Goats often play with each other by headbutting and when we rub their head they think we want to play. In the barn, we learned about the cattle feed. Younger calves get fed different food because they are still growing and need different nutrients. Montie needs food for cattle under 6 months and Murphy needs food for cattle over 6 months.
We had a bunch of extra t-shirts from this week so we “upcycled” them into bags. We cut the sleeves off and the collar out of the shirt for the handles. The bottom of the shirt was the bottom of the bag. We cut strips on each side then double knotted them together to make a strong bottom of the bag. We decorated the bags using permanent marker and a little imagination. Everyone’s bags turned out so well!
We made rainbow smoothies today. We used strawberries, orange juice, bananas, kale, and blueberries. A nutritionist came in and talked about eating a rainbow of fruits and veggies. Everyone loved their smoothies so much that they kept asking for more! Once they finished the smoothies some groups filled out a cool chart about the food groups.
We played with the ducks for a little while and pet them. Once we were done petting them we sang the little duck song!
At the end of the day, we had relay races! We started with an egg on spoon game, then followed with spinning around a bat then weaving through cones. Our next relays were water relays. One relay we used a cup and then next one we used a rag and passed them over their head to get to the bucket at the end. We even had a butterfly life cycle race where the “egg” rolled to the caterpillar, the caterpillar crawls to the chrysalis where they waited for ten seconds, then they hatched into butterflies where they flew back to the beginning. During our final race we had to weave through cones, jump over the rope, crabwalk to the next cone, then hop to the end and run back to the beginning.
Check our Facebook page next week for all the pictures of this week at camp!