At Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, kids have the opportunity to attend our day camp. Day camp is hosted in the month of June from Wednesday to Friday for one week. Each week is going to be a little different as we have different age groups. The first and third week are going to be for the younger kids, ages 6-8. The second and fourth week are for the older kids ages 9-12. For camp, we start at 9am and go till 3pm, but if the temperature is going to be above 90 degrees then we may end at 2pm. We provide snacks for the kids each day. Our education team starts planning the activities for day camp in March. This year we decided to talk about the different habitats that we have most of our animals from.
Wednesday in Day Camp
The first day we talked about Asia. We talked about tigers and leopards. At the start of the day, We get to know the kids by playing get to know you games. Each child that attends day camp gets a t-shirt to tie- dye and take home with them. They get to tie-dye on the first day. Learning about Tigers, we did an illusion craft to figure out why some tigers are orange and some are white. We also played a camouflage game to understand why they are the different colors. We walk the kids around the tour loop to see the animals on this day
Thursday in Day Camp
On Thursday, kids get dropped off at 9am, we drop off our stuff in the office, then we take the kids down to Rescue Ridge. This is a special outing we do for day campers because this area usually does not have visitors. This area is mainly for older animals we have or animals that are nervous around people. After Rescue Ridge, we come back to the office and learn more about different species, specifically focusing on African animals. We learned about African servals and made a craft. We also learned about hyenas because at ridge the kids were able to see our only hyena, Rambo. We made a craft about Rambo. Then follow up by playing a game called predator vs. prey. This is where the kids learn a little bit about the food chain and what would happen if one animal doesn’t have food resources.
Friday at Day Camp
On the last day at day camp, they get dropped off at 9am. We drop our stuff in the office and we walk one more lap around the tour loop to see the animals. On this day we learned about native species. We talked about bears and what they eat. The kids then make bear biscuits for our bears that we have at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge. The kids make enrichment for our animals, this includes painting on cardboard boxes or on paper bags. On this day they get to bring home any crafts they have made through the week. By participating in camp, they get a certificate, 3 pictures of their favorite animals and a group photo.
If this sounds like fun for your children in the summer, be sure to register early. Each week we can only host 6 kids at a time until we get our new education building built. We suggest signing up by the end of the year this year or the beginning of next year. Cost for this camp is $85 a child. If you have any questions, feel free to email education@tcwr.org or call 479-981-2625.