Games/Activities:

Ideas on how to incorporate theme: 

  • Familiarize yourself with ethical harvesting and safety around teaching plants, especially edible plants
  • Focus on a different plant every day. You could introduce the new daily plants as a mystery and have your flock look for it while they travel to their basecamp 
  • Go on plant walks using field guides 
  • Make cordage using dogbane or basswood 
  • Cook with different wild edibles (tea, pesto, soup, pizza, etc.) 
  • Discussing the age/life cycle of different plants can be a really fun thing to do with campers 
    • Find a tree stump and see if you can count the rings 
  • Plant Prints 
    1. Give each camper a piece of light colored cloth 
    2. Collect different plants to use 
    3. Find a hard surface and place fabric on it
    4. Arrange collected plants on half of the cloth and fold the other half over to cover them up 
    5. Use a rock to gently hit the cloth and open it up to see what it looks like 
  • Compass Walk activity 
    1. split the flock into 3 to 4 groups and have each go in a different direction (North, South, East, West) for about 10 mins
    2. After 10 mins they stop where they are and find plants unique to their area and come back to the center to share/compare with the other groups
  • Meet a Tree activity 
    1. Have your flock partner up. One partner will be blindfolded and the other will guide them 
    2. The person guiding brings their blindfolded partner to a tree, who has to use their senses to familiarize themselves with this tree 
    3. Then the blindfolded partner is guided away from that tree and told they can take their blindfold off and try to find the tree they just met 
    4. Partners should switch 
  • Plant Matching Game  
    1. Collect several different plants 
    2. Show them to your flock on a bandana and after a set amount of time, cover them up with another bandana 
    3. Ask your flock to go and find the same plants that you showed them 
  • Leaf Puzzles 
    • Take a large leaf (sycamore leaves are great for this!) and break it into pieces 
    • Ask your flock to try and put it back together 
  • Some questions you could ask: 
    • What do plants need to survive? 
    • Do you see similar plants at home? What about in other places you’ve been?

       

    • Songs: Humble Yourself (nettle song link), The Plants Grow, Grow 

    • Other camps to connect with: Primitive Cafe