The Dunes Center in Guadlupe will offer a free Nature Journaling Summer Camp to youth in grades 1-4 in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club of the Mid Central Coast.

The two-week program will be available to the children at the Guadalupe Boys and Girls Club, thanks to support from the Santa Barbara Foundation. The program will include two field trips; Oso Flaco Lake and Hollister Ranch.

Local artist Stephanie Krouse will assist Dunes Center staff, providing art instruction to students. Students will take a field trip to Oso Flaco Lake to explore the natural habitat of the Central Coast. They will then transform what they’ve seen and admired into a nature journal, using mixed media to create a record of their experiences.

The second field trip will take students to the exclusive tidepools at Hollister Ranch. This pristine and untouched coastline provides an extensive pallet of marine life. With the art kits provided to the students for home use, they will then be encouraged to document the amazing vistas and marine life they have experienced.

Still rebuilding from the disruption of the pandemic, the Dunes Center is creating new and interesting ways to bring Nature Education to local youth.

“I’m proud to say that we have come back stronger than ever with new and exciting educational programming, thanks to the professional and creative Dunes Center staff and support of partners like the Santa Barbara Foundation,” said Erika Weber, executive irector.

“We look forward to many more collaborative and partnership opportunities in an effort to enhance the lives of children on the Central Coast,” she said.

The Dunes Center is a natural history museum in Guadalupe that works to conserve the unique ecosystem of the local dunes through education, research, and cooperative stewardship. For more, visit https://dunescenter.org/.

For more about the Santa Barbara Foundation, visit https://www.sbfoundation.org/.

Learn about the Boys and Girls Clubs Mid Central Coast at https://centralcoastkids.org/about/.