For the second year in a row, Missouri Conservation Corps has gotten closely involved with a local summer camp called Camp I Love Me. Camp I Love Me offers an opportunity for local children to participate in an affordable, child-centered summer camp. The camp brings daylong educational programming and a nutritious lunch to children during the summer, and it offers parents an affordable alternative to summer school and to other summer camp opportunities. In 2024 we organized and hosted eight environmental education segments for the summer campers, ranging from watershed awareness to tree identification, from the importance of recycling to the cooling effect of trees. Campers also explored topics related to native plants, forest inhabitants, and wild edible plants. Thanks to a strong partnership with Columbia Parks and Recreation, all of our environmental education segments were hosted during the cool morning hours in Columbia’s public parks, and each education segment was taught by a local educator, naturalist, or specialist in their field.
Because of the success of our morning education segments, we decided to work with camp staff and organizers again in 2025 to bring another round of environmental education segments to the summer campers. This year’s environmental educators include members and representatives of Missouri Master Naturalists, Missouri Department of Conservation, Missouri Conservation Corps, US Fish & Wildlife Service, MU, Lincoln University, and Columbia’s Office of Sustainability. Educators and volunteers for our summer camp programming met several times of the winter and spring of 2025 to plan, discuss, and build the educational fabric that was to become the 2025 Camp I Love Me environmental education series.
This year Missouri Conservation Corps planned and organized 12 morning educational events for the campers, and our topics have included bugs and insects, birds and their habitats, environmental art, wild edibles and native plants, recycling and upcycling, and heat resilience. Our campers have had the opportunity to survey and study the aquatic life of local creeks, capture crayfish and tadpoles, make their own paper, and look inside the nesting boxes of purple martins. We have been to Albert Oakland Park, Kiwanis Park, Garth Nature Area, MU Campus, Capen Park and Rock Bridge State Park. We have waded through streams, climbed inside a cave, felt the sharp strength of a raptor’s talons, and learned about insects and spiders from a teaching entomologist at MU.
We have two more summer camp environmental education mornings to go this summer, including an exploration of Columbia’s 3M Wetlands, and an end of camp celebration at Stephens Lake Park. Since our first environmental education segment on a rainy morning in early June, we have seen the children in Camp I Love Me open their minds to the natural world, and we have seen faces break into smiles and young brains grow as the campers were taught about the natural environment while being immersed in the outdoors. We are very excited to have been a part of the educational development and the growth of environmental awareness in these young students and hope to do so again next year. Our involvement in the Camp I Love Me Summer Camp helps Missouri Conservation Corps strengthen its commitment to environmental education and community engagement in central Missouri.
In next month’s MCC newsletter, we will have more wonderful photos to share from this year’s Summer Camp experience, and we will also have many, many thank you’s for our educators, volunteers, and facilitators for the Summer Camp. Until then, enjoy these photos from two of our Summer Camp environmental education mornings, including an outing at Garth Nature Area, and a creek romp at Capen Park with Cara Coates and Missouri Stream Teams. And special thanks to Sam Brusven for the wonderful photos from our Capen Park event!
