A national camp will be coming to MacMurray College for the first time for elementary students to learn about the scientific and mathematics fields.
Camp Invention is a week-long camp where students will participate in different session that focus on inventing, renewable energy, robotics and architecture, among other topics.
Annie Miller, communications coordinator for Camp Invention, said the students will learn from a science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum while playing games and making their own inventions.
The camp is for children in first through sixth grades.
Each year, the camp has a theme that coordinates with the prompts, Miller said. This year’s theme is EPIC.
“What we do is we use inspiration from the inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame,” Miller said. “We use their stories to inspire children through STEM, using real world hands-on learning.”
The inductees create hands-on challenges for the students to complete using different things provided or brought from home.
“They use things from the Inventor Supply Closet that has different materials to create prototypes of their inventions to solve the problem,” Miller said. “It’s super hands-on and you should see the light that comes on in their eyes when they make something happen.”
Miller said tasks can be a simple as recalculating a route to make it more energy efficient or as complex as building a robot and find a new way of powering it.
The program is taught by local teachers, who, Miller says, also benefit from the program.
“It’s a benefit for the teachers, too, because it provides a new way of teaching,” Miller said. “There is a level of transference, they can take these things back to their classrooms, come the fall, and apply things from the camp in their own classrooms.”
This camp will take place June 13- 17 at the college campus. A camp is also going to take place at the Pleasant Plains Middle School from June 20-24.
The camp cost $225. Parents can find out more about the activities and register their children at campinvention.org.