MSU Extension Tollgate Farm and Education Center

2022 Wild Animal Camp: Day 2

Week 2 of MSU Tollgate Summer Camp has officially started and all the campers are getting wild to learn about wild animals during the next five days of camp! With our Green, Yellow, Orange and Red Pepper groups, this summer camp is bound to have the best time ever! Let's take a look at what we did throughout our day one of WILD ANIMAL CAMP! 

Again I would like to apologize in advance for the limited picture blog posts. Our Communications Leader is currently sick with COVID so we are doing our best with out her. But we can't wait to have her back! 

Flag Ceremony 

Every day of camp we kick off the day with a flag ceremony where the different pepper groups will present the flag. Today they orange peppers did an amazing job presenting the flag. Looking forward to the yellow peppers tomorrow! 

Garden Time with our Ms. Katie and the Educational Garden Volunteers

Every Tuesday morning campers get to visit the educational garden with the Ms. Katie and the Edu Garden Volunteers! Todays camp was all about Wild Animals-- Specifically pollinators! 

As MSU Tollgate Farm, we LOVE our pollinators, because we know we wouldn't have the food we love to eat without them. To learn about how pollination works, the volunteers set up a pollination activity where the campers were able to pollinate each others paper flower using Cheeto dust. Then the campers got to make their own pollinator keep sake. 

After the games, it was time to visit the garden beds for some weeding, watering, and garden bed checking. Campers were excited to find out the carrots, beans, and garlic were all ready for harvest! We will try to get to pulling them all later this week :) 

Animal Chores: Chickens, Ducks, Goats, and Rabbits 

Another day of animal chores! Today the red peppers were excited to have the opportunity to milk some goats today! During this the campers learned about how to safely milk a goat, why we milk goats, and what is the job a goat on the farm. Then the green peppers headed over to the duck pen to visit the drakes and ducks, the yellow peppers headed to the rabbits and the orange the chickens! Campers love the animal chores and love the opportunity to meet all the animals on the farm. 

Garden Kitchen: Baba Ganoush and Latkes

In our Garden Kitchen the campers helped to prepare baba ganoush. Its about to be full force egg plant season so this was the perfect recipe to kick off the summer vegetable season!

The afternoon snack was latkes! A frequent camper favorite! Who wouldn't like warm shredded potatoes crisped on a hot skillet and held together in a blanket of eggs and shallots! Yumm! I'm getting hungry just thinking about it! 

STEAM: Creature Creation

Each week at camp we have a different STEAM project campers complete. This week our STEAM project is called creature creation. Throughout the week campers will learn about wild animals and adaptation. Campers will be able to create their own animal, thinking about their habitat and animal adaptations. Campers did an amazing job getting creative and creating their initial plan for their creatures. 

Casting Practice

Tomorrow is fishing day so today to practice we tried to cast out in the field for some land fish. Some campers were brave enough to aim and cast into some hoola hoops while others just had fun with it to see how smooth or far they could cast. Campers did a great job practicing today, so I think we will be in a great spot tomorrow for the real fishing. 

Mammoth and Hunter

We played a quick game of Mammoth and Hunter where we were out in the forest and needed to eat so in addition to foraging for food, we decided to try hunting. We used a pretend "bow and arrow" to hunt a large mammoth. We shot it, however, it slowly walked away leaving a trail of blood from the arrow. Our job is to go find the animal that's been shot. For this game we split up in 2 groups one group to be the mammoth and the other group to be the hunter. The hunters would close their eyes are the mammoth left a flour trail to where they were hiding. It was the hunters job to use the flour clues to find where the mammoth was hiding. Then we reversed roles. The camping groups did a great job at this! 

Track Traps

Time to set out some track traps in the forest! I wonder what kinds of tracks we will trap? What do you think? Chickens, bears, coyotes, racoons, squirrels, turkeys, etc.. what do you think?

We will check out tomorrow to see what kinds of tracks we find in our 60 acre forest! 

 The End

Well that's the end day two! What new adventures do you think day three will bring?