The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet Blog shares our learning about how art, nature and creativity help our kids grow into caring and resilient kids.

The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet

3/13/2019

Welcome to the second edition of our Camp Wildcraft blog, "The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet." Periodically, we'll be sharing what we're learning about art and creativity, how nature helps us thrive, and growing compassionate and resilient kids. Our second edition explores RESILIENCE-- a quality we actively nurture as part of the Wildcraft experience.

GROWING RESILIENT KIDS

By Shari Davis, Camp Wildcraft Co-Founder/Director

"Resilience is the capacity to bounce back from the bumps of everyday life. All children are born with natural resilience, but kids have different degrees of buoyancy." Dr. Kenneth Ginsberg

So how do we nurture greater buoyancy in our kids so they can bounce back in the face of challenges-- both large and small? I've spent much time researching, pondering, and observing the ingredients of resilience. I'd love to share some insights I've gleaned directing a teen wellness program for a local non-profit, training educators on this topic, and of course observing our kids each summer at camp.

Why do we want resilient kids?
We all encounter challenges in our daily lives. It's part of being human. But resilient people see challenges as opportunities to learn. Resilience is a mindset that starts developing in early childhood, and fortifies children with the capacity to learn from and cope with difficulties, At home and at summer camp, caring adults can coach our kids to think through and learn from the everyday challenges they encounter so they can move forward with optimism and confidence.

So how do we nurture resilience?

Support kids in developing competence and confidence. Competence is the ability to do something successfully or efficiently. Confidence is gained through developing competencies and seeing that they are capable!
Use the Power of YET. When our children experience a setback or failure, frame it in a way that promotes perseverance and grit. Re-frame the failure by adding the powerful word YET. For example: I’m not good at multiplication vs. I’m not good at multiplication yet. The first example uses a fixed mindset and promotes a defeatist attitude. The second illustrates that there is room for growth and improvement.
Small stumbles when you are young (when stakes are relatively small) show that you can learn and bounce back from challenges. Coach kids to talk through difficulties; ask them questions which guide them to find their own solutions.
Build emotional resilience in kids through the simple act of active listening. Practice listening to your children without fixing. Help kids think through problems, for example, you can say, "Hmmm, that sounds tough, how do you think you want to handle that?"
Encourage kids to build strong social connections with good friends and supportive adults including teachers, coaches, camp counselors and others who are positive influences.
Practice and model resilient behavior as parents. Talk to your kids about what you have learned from your own challenges.

What gets in the way of resilience?

Not allowing kids to fail or take risks: When kids are not allowed to make mistakes, or take healthy risks, they don't learn the mental tools and perspectives to persevere, try again and and bounce back.
"Bumpers and guard rails": Parents can serve too long as protectors, which gets in the way of kids seeing they can thrive outside their comfort zone.
Too quickly intervening: If parents step in too fast when kids feel frustration and distress, they don't develop self-efficacy and confidence to rise above the inevitable disappointments and challenges.
"Bubble-wrapped kids": When children always have things done for them, and have no control of the outcome, it can lead to "learned helplessness." Julie Lythcott Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult, stresses the importance of intentionally teaching life-skills to encourage confidence and autonomy.
Not letting kids construct their own separate identity: kids need to be encouraged to develop healthy selves, separate from their parents, and other siblings, so they can "own" their lives and identify and value their unique strengths and interests.

Summer Camp is the perfect environment to nurture resilience. Each day, out in nature, kids practice independence and self-efficacy, build new friendships and a range of new skills. At Camp Wildcraft this is core to our mission and our staff is trained to actively nurture a resilience mind set in all of our campers.

A few (highly) recommended go-to resources
BOOKS
Julie Lythcott-Haims, How to Raise an Adult
Click here for Julie's YouTube video
Any book on brain-based parenting by the remarkable Dan Siegel, M.D.
The Whole Brain Child
The Yes Brain
Parenting from the Inside Out
Click here for Dan Siegel's YouTube video
Maggie Levine, The Price of Privilege
Jessica Lahey , The Gift of Failure
WEBSITES
https://www.heysigmund.com/building-resilience-children/
www.fosteringresilience.com/7cs_parents.php
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/
https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/emotional-resilience/#build-emotional-resilience
Brene Brown on Empathy--a must-see 30 second animated video

Do you have additional resources or thoughts to share? Please add them here!

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The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet

2/3/2018

1 Comment

Ideas and inspiration for growing creative, curious and caring kids who feel at home in nature.

Welcome to the first edition of our blog , "The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet." Each month we'll be sharing what we're learning about art and creativity, how nature helps us thrive, and growing compassionate and resilient kids. Our first edition explores CURIOSITY--one of the core values of Camp Wildcraft. We invite you to add to the comments; we're curious to hear about what you are discovering as well!

Wonder, Curiosity & The Need to Collect...

Think about a time you found a mysterious seed pod or a feather as you hiked a trail or found a smooth shard of sea glass or a prized shell while carefully scanning the wet sand on the beach.

What drives the desire to find and collect surprising, unusual or everyday wonders is a heightened sense of curiosity, strong observation skills and a love of the hunt! Benny, our Camp Wildcraft Co-Founder, has a good eye for finding all things weird and wonderful--from fossils and feathers, to wire and metal objects, rescued from the road, after being twisted into random and amusing pattens by the tires of passing traffic!

The impulse to seek, collect, categorize and display unique artifacts, or ordinary wonders, has compelled us humans since ancient times. Cultures around the world have long collected and displayed sacred objects in shrines and alters to mark a holy or sacred place. During the Age of Exploration from the 1400's to 1600s, Europeans started traveling the world and brought back natural and cultural wonders: fossils and skeletons, plants and shells, that they considered unusual, rare and wondrous. These travelers built Cabinets of Curiosities, or Wonder Rooms, in essence, shrines to nature, that are considered our our earliest museums.

Wonder and curiosity are similar, both focus our attention and enliven our existence. But curiosity is a shade different than wonder as it leads us to action – towards a next step to discover more. Indeed most educators believe that real learning begins with curiosity as this fuels motivation to know more, understand, and make connections.

So how might we encourage greater curiosity in our kids (and ourselves!)? Here are some approaches to experiment with:

Encourage kids to ask questions, but don't be so quick to answer them. Challenge them to find their own answers, in books, on line, asking people who might know, or through experiments.
Create new conversational traditions around the breakfast and dinner table. Ask each other what you are/were curious about today-- and what you discovered, what you still need to find out-- and how you plan to do it.
Encourage inquisitiveness about strangers--look at the driver or passengers in the car next to you and ask "what do you think their life is about? Take advantage of any comfortable opportunity to talk with people you don't know. Find ways to learn about and connect with people whose culture is different than your own.
Create lots of space for unstructured play and tinkering. Play fuels curiosity which in turn fuels creativity, enabling us to make surprising connections and fuel deeper learning and understanding.
Don't be so quick to throw out your kids' stuff--help them create spaces to collect, curate, arrange and physically ponder relationships between objects they find and create.
Model curiosity for your children--let them see that you never stop exploring and learning. Talk about things that you are intrigued by and what you discovered.
Get outside your comfort zone! Each week try something new, go on a field trip, explore a new part of the city, visit a museum, learn a new skill, cook different foods together, embrace unpredictability and surprise.
Encourage your kids to make a Wonder Cabinet. Suggestions below. But don't do it for them, just give them a nudge and let them build new skills and follow their own curiosity.

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious,” Albert Einstein

Create Your Own Wonder Cabinet!

Create a space in the house or yard where your collection can be arranged, exhibited, shared and talked about.
Be creative and recycle. Consider: an old shelf, fishing tackle box, pizza box, embellished shoe box, rows of recycled jars or plastic containers, plastic ziplock bags tacked to a cork board.
Collect things that surprise, inspire, and interest you. Use all your five senses to notice the wonder in everyday things, the patterns in nature, unusual objects found along the way.
Check out the book Cabinet of Curiosities by Gordon Grice. This inspiring and instructive book for kids includes lots of ideas on how to make your own.
Visit great local collections: Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park, The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City (kids 8 and up), the The Fowler Museum of Global Art at Culture at UCLA for starters.

A Gallery of Wonder Boxes, Discoveries & Collections
from Camp Wildcraft

"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder and spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals
the human spirit." e.e. cummings

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The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet

GROWING RESILIENT KIDS

The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet

Wonder, Curiosity & The Need to Collect...

Create Your Own Wonder Cabinet!

Subscribe to our Camp Newsletter!

Authors

Archives

Categories

The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet

GROWING RESILIENT KIDS​

The Wildcraft Wonder Cabinet

Wonder, Curiosity & The Need to Collect...​

Create Your Own Wonder Cabinet!

Subscribe to our Camp Newsletter!

Authors

Archives

Categories

GROWING RESILIENT KIDS

Wonder, Curiosity & The Need to Collect...