Camp Invention Promotes Education

YOUNG STUDENTS LEARN WHILE HAVING FUN WITH SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS

Abby Lawson, 6, winces as Savannah Pledger, 7, pours water through a filter while the two were taking part in the Invention Camp on Tuesday at Leverett Elementary School in Fayetteville. The exercise required campers to find ways to clean up water dirtied with household items using filters in order to learn about pollution.
Abby Lawson, 6, winces as Savannah Pledger, 7, pours water through a filter while the two were taking part in the Invention Camp on Tuesday at Leverett Elementary School in Fayetteville. The exercise required campers to find ways to clean up water dirtied with household items using filters in order to learn about pollution.

— Eewwww! Yuck!

Those were the gleeful cries from 6- and 7-year-olds as they took turns pouring vinegar, Kool-Aid, soap, dirt and other products into a bucket of water to demonstrate how a lake becomes polluted and unfit for swimming, fishing or drinking.

The scene was a classroom at Leverett Elementary School where the youngsters are among 74 first- through sixth-graders attending Camp Invention this week. The students are learning a variety of science concepts while wearing funny hats or hairdos, racing marbles down foam insulation tubing, making space suits from black plastic bags or taking apart a computer keyboard to make something with its parts.

Brooks Sego, who turned 8 on Monday, worked diligently with a flathead screwdriver to take apart a computer keyboard. With the various parts, he planned to build a lock for his room to keep his sister out, he said. Another student planned to make a helicopter out of a box fan.

Down the hall, students were putting together roller coasters out of insulated pipe foam. Once the “coasters” were taped to the walls, the students planned to test how fast marbles went down the inclines.

In another classroom, students wore vests or robes made of black garbage bags with newspapers taped around their arms and on the bottoms of their feet. They wore the garbs to protect themselves from the harshness of outer space.

“The purpose is to engage and motivate kids in science,” said Jenny Gammill, camp director who is also Fayetteville School District’s coordinator of 21st century learning. “It’s to open their world view. And they love it.”

Camp Invention is part of a network of summer science camps in schools across the country, sponsored by the U.S. Trade and Patent Office.

The students bring all sorts of recyclable items from home — plastic bottles, cereal boxes, newspaper, to mention a few — which are used during the weeklong camp for different experiments.

The camp had 120 campers last week when it was held at Root Elementary School.

Several teachers piloted a program last school year to put more science education in the hands of elementary students with hands-on experiments for second through fifth grades. The program will be rolled out in all schools in the new school year, which starts Aug. 19.

As teacher DeDe Hill called for more “pollutants” to be poured into the bucket of water, students reacted with comments such as “you can’t drink dirty water” or “it smells disgusting.”

Ethan Brock, 6, questioned the other students. “You seriously want to drink poison?”

Then the students went to work — with two clear plastic cups, a funnel, a piece of felt, cotton balls and a coffee filter — to clean up the water so it would be drinkable again.

Collin Devescery, who is “almost 7,” summed up the project, “Kids have the power to change the world.”

Teachers in the room cheered.

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