Thursday, September 10, 2009

Sensory Camp is Awesome! - Even after you leave.

So Sensory camp is over but not forgotten thanks to our little bean and lettuce plants.

Especially in an urban setting, it's easy for people to lose their connection to the natural "wild" world. It's easy to forget that all the food we eat originates in the earth. In a world of intense food processing, fast and faster food, a child's knowledge of food creation may be limited to the super market and the factories where food is packaged and processed.

A vital connection is missing. The connection to the soil and the complex ecosystems that thrive there within making life possible. If parents don't feel that connection to the soil themselves how can they pass it on to their children?

In a world were parks are being replaced by parking lots, trees are be coming rare and manicured grass is the only thing we see ever growing how can parents reconnect themselves?

If they are fortunate enough to have access to some out door soil they can cultivate their own little garden. (Last year we did tomatoes, this year it's pumpkins but we've had a slug invasion so we'll see if any survive.) But, with limited knowledge this is challenging, intimidating even. Surely if it were that easy everyone would do it, right?

Well, one of the things we learned at Sensory camp is that all we really need is a pot, soil, seeds, a sunny window sill, and water to grow our very own "food" plants.

Now we are seeing just how it grows and eventually we will eat some food right out of the dirt! (And yes we did do this at Sensory camp, but this is different because these are plants we have grown ourselves, right from seeds!)

Sensory camps was not only a fun way to to pass the summers day it also taught us some valuable lessons and is allowing us to renew our connect to the soil.




I'll update with more of our plants progress.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks Sarah - developing a connection with the natural world is exactly what we hope our camps and other programs will help do so it is so nice to hear it from a parents mouth!
    Nat

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  2. Hey Sarah, speaking of sensory camp I was wondering if you could tell me how I can sign Minuette up for it next year?? Steve and I both are interested in having her attend it next year. We both enoyed reading all about it.

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