Let’s talk green.
Take a look at a KING coach’s T-shirt, our website, our logo: we operate in blue and yellow. Blue for strength, stability and trust. Yellow for joy, energy and positivity. What is easily overlooked (by us too) is the result when we combine these colors. We get green. For KING, this means freshness, growth and life – three themes we are passionate about developing in the lives of our youth.
Holding our first annual Spring Break Camp this past week, our arts and STEAM projects were rooted in the theme: Growing Up KING in the Spring. We talked about the components needed to make life happen and growth happen, then brought those components into each day of programming:
Monday saw us with seeds; we gave them a place to put down roots – a pot for a home – and we gave them food, or soil.
Tuesday we focused on water, demonstrating the way water collects in the clouds by making shaving cream and food coloring rain clouds, then reusing the ingredients from the project and some white crayons to make rainy cards.
Wednesday was all about the sun. We made two forms of sun catchers to hang in our windows and help our plants grow with “extra light”.
Thursday, we got to see what springs up when all of the components work together: life forming out of the ground and into something stable, strong and vibrant. We used recycled Trader Joe’s bags and painted on them (after mixing our own hues of green from blue and yellow), cut out tree shapes, cut out leaves and flowers, making a varied and beautiful forest of creativity.
Finally, on Friday, we got to see how one strong and stable life can support the growth of other life; our strong trees are able to hold bird nests and provide baby birds a safe place to grow, and from which they can spread their wings and take flight.
All of these lessons about growth and life apply directly to our youth. As coaches, we’re committed to building ourselves and the kids we serve to reflect blue (stability and trust), yellow, (positivity and joy); and from these, seeing growth and life! More still, we – coaches and kids alike – strive to reflect strong, rooted trees that support and help spur one another to take off as leaders, dreamers and creators.
So as the week and our talks about seeing life came to a close, we asked some of our campers: What is your favorite thing about the Earth?
Here’s what we found…
Lena: The flowers, that’s what I love. Because they look pretty.
Simone: It makes trees. Because without the trees, the Earth would die because the car stinks and without the trees the Earth would stink.
Veronika: The grass. Because it’s green and it grows back and when it does it’s a shiny bright green.
Liam: Nature, because it grows and it turns beautiful.
Ryan: The sea, the Natural History Museum and the dinosaurs that are called fossils.
Graham: The ocean because we get to play in it and there are sea animals under it and I think that’s all.