Last week, kids from around Oxford spent the hot summer days inventing objects to create a more ‘green,? eco-friendly planet.
It was all part of Camp Invention at Clear Lake Elementary School, which is a national summer program packed with hands-on activities, brainstorming, experimentation, and unbelievable action to keep even the most hard to entertain child amused.
Program coordinator Julie Adema said 50 children participated in the program this year and that it’s been ‘very successful.?
‘The best things about Camp Invention are that it encourages kids? natural curiosity, and the pace of the program keeps even the most active kids engaged and learning,? she said. ‘It is a safe place to take chances since there is not one right answer in the process of invention. And it is non-stop fun!
Each day, students visited three different activity areas to get their creative minds working. In the M.A.R.S. (Moving at Rocket Speed) room, campers had to act as mission control and guide a martian rover back to earth. Kids acting as a time delay had to relay the messages back and forth from mission control.
In the Art Park room, the children built group sculptures and learned about the physics of kinetics, or what motions of bodies are produced under the action of other forces.
In the Saving Sludge City room, the kids had to create eco-friendly cities out of recycled materials, such as plastics, cereal boxes and egg cartons.
Probably the most exciting room for the kids was the I Can Invent room, where they learned about simple machines as they took apart a small appliance they brought with them.
They younger kids were led through a process in which they identified a problem they’d like to address with a new invention, developed the invention from the parts of the small appliance and then completed mock-patent applications.
The older kids had to develop a Rube Goldberg machine (a complicated machine to do a simple task) that would consistently break a water balloon on a target.