GRUBS Spring Break Growing Camp

Over the week of Mar 21-25 I helped to organize and run the GRUBS Spring Break Growing Camp for kids aged 6-11 year olds. GRUBS is a joint project between the Greater Victoria Compost Education Centre (compost.bc.ca) and LifeCycles Project Society (lifecyclesproject.ca)where I’m currently doing a practicum. The goal of the camp was to educated kids about growing their own food, as well as critically thinking about where the foods they eat come from, be they fruits and vegetables or processed and packaged foods. The camp was five days long with an overarching theme of food security education, and each day had a specific theme: day one, Composting & Soil; day two, Permaculture; day three, Where Does Our Food Come From?; day four, Growing Your Own Food; and day five, Bringing It All Together.

For each day, the six of us—two paid facilitators, two practicum students, and two volunteers—planned out a series of activities—such as songs, stories, field trips, and gardening activities—to illustrate the daily themes. Food security is such a wide-ranging and important subject that it was definitely a challenge at times knowing exactly what to focus on, especially over the five hours we’d have the kids. There was a definite agreement that we would need to simultaneously educate the kids about the issues, yet also keep them engaged; no easy task when it comes to kids, especially with such a wide age range! As you’ll see I think we managed to strike a fine balance that appeared to work for all of the kids.