Art Nature Mindfulness Camp Session 2: Day 1

After a week break, we are back in the swing of our summer camps! This week we have a tenacious group of ALL GIRLS! We are very excited to have a jam packed week full of art and learning about how we can love ourselves and each other!

GIRL POWER!!

Day 1:

*Mindful Morning*

We began our week by discussing what being "mindful" means. Our campers brainstormed the following: "relaxing, being quiet, concentrating, closing our eyes, and poses!"

Following our idea session, we practiced some yoga poses to stretch out our bodies. We also learned some breathing techniques that we can use to calm our nerves or wake us up!

This is our Elephant Breathing! We can use this skill to help us feel energized and ready for our day!

*Nature Wands*

Today we began making our Nature Wands that we can take with us when we go on our mindful nature walks!

Using acrylic paints, the campers added their own designs and patterns to their sticks!

Tomorrow we will add onto our sticks after an evening of drying!

*Nature Journals*

During our mindful nature walks, we will bring along our nature journals to sketch and document our observations.

All of our beautiful nature journals lined up and ready to go on their first walks! We also brought along paper bags to collect natural materials to use in our projects this week.

*Meditation Pouches*

Throughout this week we will participate in a simple meditation practice which involves meditation disks. However, first we had to make the pouch that will hold all of our disks. We used watercolors to paint the fabric - each of us making a unique design!

Creating these pouches will allow us to bring our meditation practice with us wherever we go!

*Mindful Nature Walk*

We persevered through the bug bites and hot sun and managed to have a lovely walk through the neighborhood. We observed a HUGE colony of ants and watched with awe as they tried to move an insect wing across the sidewalk by working together!

We definitely worked up an appetite while on our walk! Our campers were RAVENOUS when we arrived back at our studio. :-)

*Creative Play*

After lunch and in between art invitations, our campers always have a range of activities that they can choose to explore! Today included creating a long chain out of hangers that extended from end to end of our backyard space!

Campers also enjoyed role playing by imagining they were horses in the derby! These campers found some bubble wrap and immediately began to jump and dance all over it! Such fun!

A group of our campers were thoroughly interested in our color scarves! They used them as props in their dance choreography! We had about 3 dance recitals in one day! In the above photo the dancers were creating a fire with their red, orange, and yellow scarves. So creative and beautiful!

And of course there are our studio chickens!

Our campers worked on conquering their concerns regarding our chickens by feeding them clovers found in our yard!

*Kindness Stones*

While learning about mindfulness, we learned that we are to act compassionate toward ourselves, toward others, and toward the earth.

We followed this conversation by painting kindness stones!

Each camper painted two stones - one to pass out during our mindful nature walk tomorrow and another to take home on Friday.

Our goal is to pass a little sunshine in our neighborhoods through our colorful rocks with positive messages!

I think we will definitely accomplish our goal! :-)

*Meditation Disks*

Each day we will add a meditation disk to our meditation pouches! The disks will have a different meaning represented by a natural element. Today we thought about flowers - what colors remind us of flowers, how do flowers make us feel, what do we think about flowers? Two of our campers said that flowers make them feel "like I'm floating on a cloud" and "like I'm sliding down a rainbow." (AHH! I think my tree-hugger heart skipped a beat!

I'm so happy to be back in "camp mode" especially with this spectacular all female group! I love their spirit and creativity!

See everyone tomorrow!

--Victoria