#junior explorers

Camping is fun! It is such a great way to experience the outdoors and get to know how nature works from close quarters. As a Junior Explorer it is also an essential part of every adventure you experience because when you are out there in the Arctic, Amazon or Serengeti you’ve got to camp!

Campers become responsible campers when they follow some basic rules of camping that helps keep the environment safe. Remember that time in Mission Serengeti when Kia and Kyle were extra careful to not leave the campfire burning? So this spring and summer when you are out camping, here are some important rules you can follow to enjoy the outdoors as well as make sure that your fun time doesn’t ruin the lovely surroundings around you.

Don’t Litter

Keeping your surrounding clean is a rule you can follow anywhere – at home, at school and while you are camping. The orange peels, packs, canned food items should all be removed before you leave camp so that the place looks as pristine as before and to avoid any wild animal accidentally eating your leftovers.

Keep The Noise Down

Sound travels easily outdoors. It is therefore a good habit to speak only when necessary and in general avoid making any loud noises when you are camping. The noise you make can disturb wild animals too, and you might just lose an opportunity to sight a rare and beautiful bird that was sitting on a tree branch ahead of you and flew away because of the noise you made!

Careful With Fire

For many, camping means a campfire. It’s fun to sit around a warm fire and tell each other stories but do remember that in the forested area where you are sitting forest fires can start pretty easily! Be careful to put your fire off as soon as you leave campsite and never leave a campfire unattended.

Don’t Feed Wild Animals

Feeding a cute deer, rabbit or even a supposedly harmless looking bear cub could look tempting, but it is a strict no go zone. Wild animals are used to eating food from the wild and not the human processed food you may give them. Even if the food is raw, it’s safer to observe the animals from a distance as they might carry infections or behave in a way that you are not used to. Unless you have an animal expert with you who has experience handling animals, it’s best to leave wild animals alone and never feed them.

Pack Survival Gear

No matter where you are or where you go, the first thing to pack for camping is a survival gear that will keep you safe when something goes wrong like you hit a storm, lose your way or your vehicle breaks down. In the outdoors it might be some time before you get help and a survival gear will come in very very handy.

Cecil the Lion via wikimedia

  Nearly a year after Zimbabwe’s most famous lion Cecil was illegally hunted, a new children’s book is bringing back the happy memories of the lion and his pride.

Written by Craig Hatkoff and his two daughters, Juliana and Isabella, the book Cecil’s Pride: The True Story Of A Lion King tells the story of the lion when he lived.

“Cecil’s death was a very dark moment that tapped into a zeitgeist of anger about our endangered species, and indeed our planet as a whole,” Hatkoff said to The Dodo. “The whole world knew how Cecil died; we wanted to tell the story about how Cecil lived.”

“We found Cecil’s ‘biographer,’ researcher Brent Stapelkamp, who kept watch over Cecil for nine years,” Hatkoff explained. “Brent had also taken stunning photographs of Cecil that we were able to use throughout the book.”

A Pride of Lions

Lions are the only wild cats that live in a pride that consists of a lion, 2-3 lionesses and their cubs. In Mission Serengeti, Junior Explorers helped one of these lion prides find prey.

What was unusual about Cecil’s pride was that there was another male lion who was part of the pride name Jericho. Instead of fighting each other the two worked together till Cecil’s death and even after that Jericho continued to look after Cecil’s cubs.

Play Mission Serengeti and Mission Wild Cats to learn more about lions, tigers and other cats of the world and do check the book to remember Cecil the magnificent lion in a happy way!

The animal kingdom is full of exceptional architects with an ability to build homes that are not only comfortable and keep them safe, but that are a marvel to look at. And we are not just talking about birds here!

Take a look at these proven master architects of the animal world and their masterpieces!

Wasp

The circular cabbage-like homes of wasps are made out of scraps of wood fiber mixed with saliva.

Image by Ingrid Taylor

Social Weaver Birds

These birds from Africa are not building nests for a small family. Each nest houses at least 100s at a time and therefore they are built on such a large scale!

Image by Ralph Malan and Paul Keller

Beavers

Sticks, mud and lots of hardwork is what helps beavers construct the sturdy lodges near water that can even have many rooms within it!

Image by Mark Gallagher

Termite

Termite homes are more like an apartment or fortresses. Mound-building termites live in Africa, Australia and South America and the mounds they create are enormous — as big as 30 meters in diameter.

Career Shell

Found in tropical and subtropical ocean waters, these snails protect their soft body parts with a shell covering constructed from old shells cemented together to give a spiral shape.

Image by Park.org

Isn’t it incredible fun to reach into a bag and pull out things without looking? It’s mysterious and exciting! Turn this into a fantastic nature game you can play to celebrate Earth Day on April 22! The game can be played by children and adult of all ages!

Here’s What You Need:

1 bag that is not see-through.

Nature objects

Animal figurines from past Junior Explorers Missions

Candies (optional)

How To Play:

Send at least one person outdoors to look for and gather nature objects. Young children should be accompanied with an adult. You can also divide the number of players into 2 groups and ask one group (A) to look for the objects outside.

Pick nature objects like,

Pebbles

Rocks

Seeds

Leaves

Twigs that are not sharp to touch and without thorns.

Flowers

Acorns etc.

Don’t pick objects that are slimy or muddy. Also don’t pick objects that are too big for the bag!

Put all the objects and the Junior Explorers animal figurines, candies into the bag.

Now the other players take turns in reaching into the bag and taking one object out with eyes closed. If it’s a group game, let each player of the group (B) pick one object at a time.

The player who picked the object has to guess what he or she is holding. The one who put all the objects in the bag can give hints to let them guess the object.

The one who guesses the maximum objects correctly, wins!

It’s a new player’s turn to go out and gather different nature objects.

Happy Earth Day! Tell us more ideas to celebrate Earth Day. Reach us through our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook page. We’d love to hear from you!

Image via wwf.org

“This is a very, very rare thing,” said one conservationist when he first heard of the sighting of a Sumatran Rhino in Indonesia. Others added – “Unprecedented!” “Outstanding”. It is indeed a rare thing to see a Sumatran Rhino, with only 100 surviving in the world. The Sumatran Rhino was declared as Extinct in Malaysia last year. Indonesia is now the only country globally where it survives and here too it hadn’t been seen for the last 40 years!

The smallest of the Asian rhino species was first seen by members of WWF organisation on 12 March. They captured the female rhino in a wooden pit in Borneo, Indonesia, to protect and relocate it and keep it safe from poachers.

Image via WWF

Here are some fun facts about the Sumatran Rhino that you can share with your Junior Explorer,

Sumatran rhinos are also called Hairy rhinos because of their visible body hair unlike other rhino species.

They are the smallest of all rhinos.

They have 2 horns with the front one being much longer than the back one.

Sumatran rhinos can run fast and are very agile. They climb mountains easily and can negotiate very steep slopes and riverbanks.

Ask Your Junior Explorer

Which are the rare species they have seen during their missions as a Junior Explorer?

(Jaguars in Mission Amazon, Polar Bear in Mission Arctic, Mountain Gorilla in Mission Virunga, are some of them!)

    Source

“This sure looks fun!”

Loading Junior Explorers Fact or Fiction