Note that if you purchase something via one of our links, including Amazon, we may earn a small commission.
By Owen Duncan, content specialist with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Sea Center
How do you grow the next generation of environmental stewards? A good caretaker needs both an understanding of what they’re tending and confidence in their own ability to act. Based at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH) and Sea Center, Nature Adventures camps and classes offer kids prime locations for building their confidence in nature and feeding their hunger for knowledge.
“In 15 years of youth programming, I’m seeing kids’ anxiety going up,” says Nature Adventures Manager Clay Sipiora, M.S. “A lot of kids come in extremely afraid of making mistakes, getting dirty, and the unknown. In Nature Adventures, we give them a space where it’s safe for them to explore, try something new, take risks, and challenge themselves.”
One of the key sustainability themes in Nature Adventures is developing children’s understanding of where the things in their everyday lives come from. At the Sea Center, they learn about where our seafood comes from — living marine animals in the ecosystems they study. Bridging that common disconnect from our food sources is important to building an appreciation for life on the planet.
At the museum, crafts and activities that involve reusing and upcycling help kids understand the life cycles of everyday objects and how their own choices can affect the planet positively or negatively. “During summer camp, we make pots from upcycled paper, and we plant native seeds,” Clay explains. “We use soil that comes from our compost bin. The kids throw their leftovers in there, and they see how the decomposers break it down to eventually build soil.”
Witnessing the way nature works and turning their own hands to creative processes, the children learn they can conserve resources in a way that is connecting, rather than limiting. “They get excited about putting their hands in the dirt and having the experience of cultivating a life.”
Every day in summer, the kids in the Sea Center camps go to the beach to play. East Beach — near the outflow of Mission Creek — is a perfect place to see how the local watershed connects to a vast, interconnected global ocean. They learn that by taking care of what’s close to us, we’re caring for what’s distant, too. “This summer, kids in our camps diverted hundreds of pounds of trash from the ocean,” Clay says. “They even found items that were too big to carry, so we taught them to use the city’s app to report it and extend their positive impact.”
Nature Adventures camps and classes at the museum are offered throughout the year; Sea Center camps are offered in summer. Visit sbnature.org/natureadventures for more details.
