Nature and technology: ideas in activities with children

Hello everybody!

At this point I'm working on designing activities for children where I want to create a bridge between nature and technology.

This is related to weekend activities or camps for 9 to 12 years old children that take place at a house in the mountains. The idea is to support them in reconnecting with nature and develop their creativity and inner strength.

While going through the LCL materials I realised that we don't have to take the technology away from the children in order for them to connect with the natural environment. It's time to create a friendly place where the two can be balanced.

Still, I want to encourage the children to develop their creativity, to be curious and to tinker while using the 4Ps.
The majour theme that I started to work with is Hero's Journey and empowering children to find their inner strength.

So I appreciate any ideas on how to include technology in such activities (2 to 7 days long) without needing many resources (like a laptop for each child or so on).

Thank you and looking forward to discussing more

One way to connect nature and technology is with biomimetics, technology that is inspired by animal movement and other natural processes. MIT, Stanford and Berkeley have labs for sophisticated biomimetic robot projects, but you could do it very simply -- for example, project to make a robot that has head movement and eyes like an owl, or a robotic plant that turns towards sunlight.
Here are a couple links -- these are technical discussions but the animals involved, gecko, Venus flytrap, are likely to appeal to your age group:
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=113980&CultureCode=en
http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/institute-of-electrical-and-electronics-engineers/towards-a-bio-mimetic-flytrap-robot-based-on-a-snap-through-mechanism-BZCfYY0wr3/1
You might be able to connect this with your Hero's Journey theme by analogizing to the idea that biological organisms have different physical strengths.

Thank you for the suggestion, @KathyG. I love the idea of small and simple robots that are shaped as elements of nature.

I looked at the links and they are very interesting. I've been researching for easy models, but I found complex models so far.

I would appreciate if anyone has a simple example of a flower robot or something similar.

Have a great tinkering experience!