Back to Nature
November Back to Nature: Nature Art & Wood Workshop Report
Location: Mitake
Date: November 23rd, 2019
Participants: 20 campers, 6 LITs, 6 sponsors (from Asurion), 1 wood workshop partners, 7 Mirai no Mori staff
Program:
This month’s Back to Nature Program was nature art & team activities & wood workshop!
In the morning, everyone gathered in Mitake, and everyone was happy to see each other especially after the cancellation of last October program due to the typhoon.
We changed our plan, and quickly explained how fun the Nature Art could be, and then worked on team challenge.
Followed by a human chain activity, one of the popular activities at our Summer Camp, everyone enjoyed working on “Spaghetti tower” activity to compete the hight of the tower made of spaghetti and tape.
After lunch, it’s wood workshop time to make our own chopsticks! At first, our wood workshop partner “C-chan” lectured us to feel different characteristics of woods with our own senses by observing, touching, and smelling.
After learning how to use the knives safely, we were right off to making our own chopsticks!
“There is no mistake or rule of what it should be” – sometimes it didn’t go the way it was supposed to, but the campers were able to be patient and embrace the uniqueness of their craft at the end. Some worked so hard with different types of sand papers, some tried to carve their names, and one was determined to make his own mini sword out of chopsticks.
In the end, everyone had big smiles on their faces with their one of a kind chopsticks as souvenirs, and already started talking about what they would make next year.“I was happy with my little sword that I wanted to make since last year.”
“This was my first time to join Mirai no Mori program, and I was nervous. I chose “respect” as a value to work on, since I wanted to get along with everyone with diverse background. I am happy with my own chopsticks, and glad that we had a good teamwork in my team.”
“I was nervous if campers could handle the craft knives properly. But to my surprise, all the compares were really careful and taking good care of the knives, which was really impressive.”
We would like to thank our sponsors, wood workshop partner, and everyone who joined this program! We hope to see you again soon!
