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Seed Bombs

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Did you know that bees pollinate most of our food?
Imagine a world with no strawberries, no watermelons, no corn.  Yikes!

Did you know that Honey Bees are not native to the United States?
It’s true!  Our honey is made by European Honey Bees which were brought here in the 1600’s.

What pollinated plants before honey bees arrived?
Native bees!  Though most don’t produce honey, our native bees pollinate most of our food crops and they need our help!  Many species of native bees are dying out.  They rely on native flowers for most of their food and native flowers are getting harder to find in many areas.

How can YOU help the native bees of our area?
By helping to replant native wildflowers!  These aren’t just flowers that look pretty or flowers that grow well in our area.  They are native to Southern California and the native bees love them!

What should you do if you DON’T live in Southern California?
Use flower seeds native to where you live!  You’ll want to get them out in the wild before the spring growing season starts in your area.

What else can you do?
You’ll find more information and ideas on the National Wildlife Federation’s website, including information about helping the Bumble Bee Watch!

For this Take Action Project, you will make seed balls with native flower seeds inside.  You’ll throw the seed balls out into the wild just before the winter rains come, giving the seeds a great chance of sprouting and growing. Hopefully there will be a LOT more native flowers for our native bees next spring and even more the next year as those flowers make more seeds!

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Gather Your Supplies
You will need some NATIVE flower seeds. This is different than flowers that will simply grow well in our area – those can be VERY invasive and bad for the environment.  If in doubt, get California Poppy seeds.

Here’s what you need to make three seed balls:

  • Your seeds
  • 12 to 16 squares of toilet paper
  • 2 Tablespoons of flour
  • ¼ cup of water
  • A helper (An adult might be needed for the cooking and an extra pair of hands is helpful, too.)
  • A drop of green AND a drop of red food color can also be added.  This makes a nice muddy brown so your seed bombs will blend in with the ground and not look like trash.

Step 2: Make the paste

  1. Mix the flour and water together in a bowl until there are no more lumps.
  2. Microwave the mixture for 30 seconds.  You can also cook it on the stove over medium heat, stirring it just until it starts to thicken.
  3. Stir the mixture well so it is nice and smooth.

Set it aside to cool while you do the next steps.

Step 3: Get the paper mache strips ready

Rip six squares of toilet paper into strips.  Set them aside.

Step 4: Make Your Seed Balls

Put a few seeds in the center of a square of dry toilet paper. You don’t need many seeds for your seed balls.  If you use too many, the seedlings will compete with each other and none of them will thrive.

Ball the dry toilet paper around the seeds.  Why dry paper?  If the seeds get wet, they may sprout too soon and they will die before you get a chance to toss them out into the wild.

Wrap another square of dry toilet paper around that little ball to make it bigger and to help keep the seeds dry.

Dip one of the torn strips of toilet paper into your flour mixture.  Use your fingers to scrape most of the flour mixture back off.  Don’t pull too hard!  Wet toilet paper rips easily.

Wrap that damp strip around your ball of seeds.

Keep going until the entire ball is covered.

Set the finished seed balls someplace safe to dry.

Repeat for the other two seed balls.

Step 5: “Plant” your seed balls
Once the balls are completely dry, put them in a baggie to keep them safe until it’s time to throw them out into the wild.  When will that be? In Southern California, December or January would be great! That gives the winter rains a chance to get the seeds growing just in time for spring. Where should you throw them?  Someplace local but wild.  A good choice would be along a local hiking trail.

Family Picnic Dinner

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During our regular, in-person day camps, we have an all-camp dinner on Friday evening. We usually have hot dogs, chips, fruit, and cookies. Since we weren’t together for camp in 2021, we asked everyone to continue the tradition by having a picnic dinner!  Invite your favorite people, make some yummy food, and enjoy!

 

Water Balloon Toss

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

Getting wet on a hot summer day is a part of camp that girls look forward to every year.  For this activity, you will need at least one balloon.

Keep in mind, this isn’t a water balloon fight – it’s a challenge!

How many times can you and a partner toss a water balloon back and forth before someone misses and gets wet?

If you don’t have a partner, how many times can you toss it up and catch it before YOU get wet?

You can make the challenge harder as you go by moving further apart or by tossing the balloon higher each time.

Don’t forget to clean up the pieces of the popped balloons.  Girl Scouts always clean up their trash to help protect nature.

Anemometer

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

Scientists use many different types of instruments to measure many different things. Scales for measuring weight and thermometers for temperature are two examples you’ve seen before.  Scientists who study things like the environment, the oceans, and the weather use an instrument called an anemometer that measures the speed of the wind.

For this activity, you need:
5 small paper cups
2 straws
A new pencil
A bag of air dry clay
A sewing pin or push pin
Tape
Sharpie or markers
A good pair of scissors

  1. On one of your cups, draw four dots just below the rim of the cup.  These dots should be evenly spaced so they are on opposite sides of the cup from each other.  Draw another dot in the middle of the bottom of the cup.
  2. Using your sharp scissors, carefully punch holes where your dots are.
  3. Thread one of the straws through a pair of upper holes.  Thread the other straw through the other pair.
  4. Thread a cup on to the end of each straw. Use pieces of tape to secure the straw in place so the cup can’t slide back off.  As you work, make sure the cups are all facing in the same direction. Think of all the horses facing forward as a merry-go-round spins.
  5. Slide your pencil up through the hole in the center of your middle cup.  Carefully push your pin through the two straws and then into the eraser of the pencil.
  6. Next, make a stand for your anemometer.  Mold the air dry clay around the base of the pencil.  You are hoping for a wide base with a tall section around the pencil.  Once you have a shape you like, wiggle the pencil around a bit to make the hole a little wider.  While gently turning the pencil, pull the pencil back out and set your stand aside to dry.  This can take several days.

    Note: Once the clay dries, the pencil should be able to spin freely in the stand.
    If you find your air dry clay stand is too short or too light, you can also use an empty water bottle.  Partly fill the bottle with sand or pebbles to add some weight.

You can use your anemometer to tell how fast the wind is blowing!  How?

  • Use your markers to color one of the cups a bright color, something you can spot really well as the anemometer turns.
  • When the anemometer is spinning in the wind, count how many times that cup goes by in 10 seconds.
  • Use this chart to find roughly how fast the wind is blowing.

This chart is from WindAndWeatherTools.com

Suncatcher

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

For this activity, you will need:
4 large, colored craft sticks
A piece of yarn
A piece of deli paper (wax paper or tracing paper works, too)
Some colored tissue paper
A paint brush
Glue
Scissors
Pencil

  1. Lay two craft sticks on your table. Glue the piece of yarn to one end of both sticks.
  2. Glue the other two sticks to the first two so you make a frame. The yarn ends up sandwiched between the sticks.
  3. Let the glue dry completely before continuing.
  4. Trace your frame onto the deli paper and cut out the shape. Use a thin line of glue to glue the piece of deli paper to your frame.
  5. While you wait for the deli paper’s glue to dry, decide what picture you will make. You can make a design, a mosaic, a picture, or just something colorful – the choice is yours!
  6. Once you decide what you want to make, cut or tear your colored tissue paper into small pieces.
  7. Using your paint brush, brush a thin layer of glue onto the front of your framed paper.  Stick small pieces of the colored tissue paper into the glue to make the design you chose.
  8. Once it’s dry, find a sunny window to hang it.

Ice Cream in a Bag

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

Every year at day camp, we have an outdoor cooking station.  We’ve done sous vide omelettes, hamburger foil packets, hash browns, and of course, ice cream in a bag.

For this yummy treat, you will need:
Sprinkles
A one gallon plastic bag
1/4 cup of rock salt
A quart ziplock freezer or storage bag
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 cup of half-n-half (almond, oat, or soy based unsweetened creamer works too)
3 cups of ice

  1. Pour the sugar, vanilla, and half-n-half into the the quart bag.
  2. Add anything else you want in your ice cream (see the variations below).
  3. Seal the quart bag, making sure to squeeze out as much air as possible and making sure it is well sealed.
  4. Gently massage the bag to mix the ingredients.
  5. Pour the ice and rock salt into the gallon bag.
  6. Place the quart bag inside the gallon bag.  Squeeze as much air as possible out of the gallon bag and seal it.
  7. Shake the bag and gently bounce it on a counter or table for 15 minutes or until the ice cream is thick and ready to eat.  The more you mix it, the creamier your final ice cream will be.  If your fingers get too cold, put a small towel around your bag or wear mittens.
  8. When ready to eat, wipe off the outside of the quart bag before opening it.  This will remove most of the salt water so it doesn’t get into your ice cream.
  9. Spoon your ice cream into a bowl and add the sprinkles!

Variations:

  • Chocolate Ice Cream: Add a 1/2 tablespoon of baking cocoa powder and an additional 1 tablespoon of sugar to the quart sized bag before mixing it up.
  • Strawberry Ice Cream: Chop a medium sized strawberries into small pieces.  Add them to the quart sized bag before mixing it up.
  • Other fruit flavors: You can chop up any berries and most other fruits you like!  However, do not use citrus fruits or other acidic fruits.  The acid in the fruit may curdle your half-n-half.

Other Notes:

  • Why Ziplock baggies?  We’ve tried many brands for this activity.  The store brand baggies tend to leak at the seams, which either allows salt water to leak into the ice cream (yuck!) or allows salt water to leak all over your counter (ewww!).  We have not tried Glad brand bags.
  • Can you use plastic containers instead?  Yes!  This is a great way to reduce plastic waste. You can put your quart baggie, ice, and salt into a large bowl that has a tight fitting lid.  Shake the large bowl well, just like you would do with the gallon bag in Step 7.
  • Why do you need salt? If you tried to turn half-n-half into ice cream with just plain ice, the ice would melt long before the half-n-half froze.  When you add salt to the ice, it lowers the freezing point of the water.  So as the salty ice begins to melt, it pulls heat from anything nearby – like the mixture in your ice cream bag!  This is why they put salt on the roads in places where it snows.  The salt lowers the freezing point of the water (melted snow) that is on the road.  This helps keep that water from turning into dangerous ice.
  • Why do you need to shake and bounce your bag? Ice cream is an emulsion.  That means it’s a mixture of several things that don’t normally like to mix – like oil and water!  When you shake the baggie, the fats and water in the half and half break up into tiny drops that are all mixed together.  If you stop mixing, the tiny drops group together until the fats and water are separate again. When you keep shaking while also making it freeze,  the little drops of water form ice crystals that break into smaller crystals.  These small ice crystals mix with the little bubbles of milk fat and become trapped as the mixture freezes, forming an emulsion!  The more you mix it, the smaller the crystals will be and the creamier your ice cream will be.

Lava Lamp

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

The lava lamps you see in the stores use wax and heat to work.  The light bulb heats up the wax at the bottom of the lamp.  As it gets hot, the wax expands and it’s density decreases.  When the density of the wax is lower than the density of the water, the wax floats to the top of the lamp.  When the wax is at the top and away from the light bulb, it begins to cool back down.  As it cools, it shrinks and it’s density increases.  This makes it sink back to the bottom where the process starts all over again!

We are going to make a lava lamp that doesn’t need electricity and heat.
You’ll need:
A flat bottomed test test with a cap or a small jar
Food coloring
Fizzy Tablets (Alka-seltzer type tablets work well)
Some cooking oil (mineral oil or baby oil also work well)
Water

  1. Food coloring can stain so be sure you are wearing clothes that are ok to get dirty.  Be sure to protect your work surface too.
  2. Put a few drops of food coloring in your tube.
  3. Fill the tube about half way with oil.  What did the food coloring do?
  4. Now fill the rest of the tube with water.  What did the food coloring do this time?
  5. Put the cap on your tube and gently shake the tube to mix everything together.  Let it sit for a few minutes and watch what happens.
  6. Once everything settles back down, you’ll have two layers – a colored water layer and a layer of oil.
  7. Now comes the fun part!  Break a fizzy tablet into smaller pieces.  Drop a piece into the tube and watch what happens!  What does the tablet do when it hits the oil?  What does it do once it sinks down to the water layer?

If you run out of tablet pieces, you can still make and watch bubbles by gently shaking the capped tube first.  Now, instead of rising, the colored bubbles sink!  Why?

Levitating Orb

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

Everything around you is made of different types of atoms and atoms are made of several different teeny-tiny parts, too!  One of these parts is called electrons.  When you rub a balloon on your hair, some of the electrons from your hair JUMP over to the balloon.  That means the balloon now has too many electrons (and a negative charge) and your hair now has too few electrons (and a positive charge).   When things have opposite charges, like one is positive and one is negative, they stick together! 

But what happens when two things have the same charge? Instead of sticking to each other, they get pushed apart and we can use that to make tinsel fly!

For this activity, you will need:
Tinsel strands
A piece of wool fabric
A piece of PVC pipe, 18″ to 24″ long

  1. Lay 6 strands of tinsel down on a table.  Tie a knot at both ends, with the knots 4 to 6 inches apart.
  2. Trim off the long tails from both ends.
  3. Put the wool fabric over one shoulder, hold the tinsel by one of the knots with that same hand and the PVC pipe with the other hand.
  4. Rub the pipe against the wool while you count to 25. Some of the electrons from the wool are jumping over to the pipe.
  5. Touch the tinsel with the pipe. This makes some of the electrons from the pipe jump to the tinsel.  Now both the tinsel and the pipe have the same charge and like charges will push away from each other!
  6. Now rub the pipe against the wool again to get more electrons onto the pipe.
  7. Ready for the trick?
  8. Hold your pipe out in front of you, about waist high, and hold your tinsel out a couple of feet above the pipe.
  9. Now drop your tinsel onto the pipe!

As the tinsel drops towards the pipe, the extra electrons in both the tinsel and the pipe repel each other. Even the individual strands of the tinsel will push away from each other, turning them into a flying ball!

Did your tinsel stick to your pipe instead?  No worries!  This trick is tricky to master!  Keep trying!  If you get frustrated, set it aside for awhile, even a day or two, and then try again.  If you keep trying, we promise you’ll get it!

Sundial

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

Have you ever stopped to think about how the sun moves through the sky during the day?  It rises in the east, moves slowly higher and higher in the sky, and then slowly sinks in the west.  But really, YOU are the one moving, not the sun!

The Earth rotates once each day and that is what makes it look like the sun is moving.  You can try it yourself:

  • Stand in the middle of a room.  You are going to pretend to be the Earth.  Now pick something in the room to be the sun and stand facing your “sun”.  This is what it’s like at noon, when the Sun is high up overhead.
  • Now slowly turn your whole body, including your head, until you can just barely see your “sun” out of the corner of your eye.  That’s what it’s like at sunset.  The part of the Earth that you are standing on is getting ready to turn away from the sun.
  • Now keep turning until you can just barely see your “sun” out of the corner of your other eye.  It’s sunrise!  The part of the Earth you are standing on is getting ready to turn back towards the sun.

Our Earth turns around and around, just like that, every day. Even though you were the one moving, it looked like everything else in the room shifted places. For thousands of years, people have used this motion to help keep track of time and you are going to make a sundial so you can do the same.

You will need:
A straw
A landscape staple
A piece of chalk
A paper plate
A marker or pen
Tape
A good pair of scissors
A smartphone or compass (Optional)

  1. Using the landscape staple, carefully poke two holes along the rim of the plate.  Be very careful!  As the staple pushes through the plate, don’t let it stab your hand.
    You can see the holes in this picture:
  2. Using your scissors, carefully poke a hole in the middle of the plate.
  3. Insert one end of the straw into the hole.  Use your tape to keep the straw as straight up and down as you can make it.
  4. Optional: If you line up your plate with a compass, you can move your plate to a different spot if you need to and the sundial will still work.
    Here’s how:
    Write an “S” on one edge of the plate.
    Using a compass or a compass app, figure out which way is South.
    Place your plate on the ground with the “S” lined up with the “S” on the compass.
  5. Put your landscape staple through the holes and into the ground to keep your plate from blowing away in a breeze.
  6. At the top of an hour (10:00, 2:00, 5:00, etc.) use your sharpie to color in the shadow made by your straw and write the hour next to the shadow.  Keep doing this, each hour until sunset.  You can fill in the morning hours tomorrow, too!
  7. Once your sundial is complete, you can tell which hour you are in by seeing where the shadow falls.

 

So what is the chalk for?

Shadows grow and shrink all through the day.  Using your chalk and something like a lamp post, a tree, or even yourself, you can make a huge sundial on the sidewalk!  Trace the shadow you picked, write the current time next to it, and come back in an hour to see how the shadow has changed.

Floating Ball

Camp-in-a-Box 2021

You will need:
A bendy straw
A really big nail (about as big around as your straw)
A pom pom
Safety goggles
An empty, clean water or soda bottle with its cap
A hammer
A good pair of scissors

Using your scissors, carefully cut off the “funnel” portion at the top of your bottle.

Put on your safety goggles.  Whenever you use a tool, there is a chance that something might get hit wrong, sending something flying right towards your face and eyes. The safety goggles will protect your eyes.

Place the bottle cap on a safe surface for hammering.  You will be punching a hole through the lid so be sure it’s OK to drive a nail into whatever surface the cap is on – outside on the grass or dirt might be best.

Drive the nail right through the center of the cap.  Once it’s through, twist it around to make sure the hole is smooth and round.  Remove the nail.

Poke the short end of your bendy straw through the cap.  If your hole is a bit too small, put the nail back in and wiggle it around some more to make the hole bigger. If your hole is a bit too big, you can try again with a different cap or seal the area around the straw with glue.

Put the pom pom inside your bottle top and blow through the straw.  Why does the pom pom float?  Why do you think it spins?