OCOTILLO– The Imperial Valley Desert Museum (IVDM) hosted their Spectacular Saturdays Summer camp, July 27, with a focus on botany to educate the youth on native plants and their historical uses.
The Spectacular Saturday’s summer camp is the first summer camp IVDM has put out. The Imperial Valley Community Foundation provided a $5,000 grant for IVDM to make it a reality. These funds went to procuring field experts for the summer camp themes and providing free transportation for the kids to participate.
Each Saturday, starting from July 13 through August 10, has a different theme and activities relevant to that theme. For Geology, camp attendees learned about the phases of rock formations and their cycles of creation. Candy was used to simulate these phases and cycles.
This Saturday, children learned about the local plant life, its history, and its uses such as natural pain relievers and natural medicine. To supplement their education, attendees formed clay figures in the shape of local plant life.
“A lot of these concepts can be dense,” said Angelina Luz, interim director at IVDM. “We want to make sure we do something fun with them so that they take a little something. We don’t expect them to to retain everything but at least some of it.”
Creating an educational, approachable, and fun environment for the attendees is an important objective of the summer camp.
“Sometimes students get intimidated in a classroom when they get introduced to these subjects,” said David Arevalo, education coordinator. “Here we try to make it more approachable.”