This week I had the pleasure of running a summer STEM camp! I wanted to share some of the things we did and that I learned in order to benefit anyone planning their own camp or wanting to do this in the future. Because there will be a lot of information I am going to break this into more than one post.
While I officially ran the camp through the homeschool academy where I teach classes, what that did was provide a location and some marketing. Most of the campers were not our students. I did all of the planning, brought in all of the materials, and personally taught all of the students. I say that because this could easily be replicated not going through a school.
This camp ran from Monday-Thursday from 9:00-2:00. I started with 7 students on Monday and had 10 by Thursday. They were all boys (this was not intentional and just the way it worked out) and ranged from 3rd grade-6th grade. I had 3 pairs of brothers including 1 set of twins.
First learning- 9:00-2:00 was too long, especially since the kids did not want to spend much time outside in the Texas heat. They did really well with challenges in the morning but then after lunch and outdoor play were tired and not as motivated. We made it work by incorporating games and free time, but if I were to do this again I would do 9-12 instead.
Day 1
As the kids came in I had little brainteaser puzzles and games at each table they could solve while everyone was arriving.
Once everyone was there we started camp by discussing “What is STEM?” One of the boys knew it stood for science, technology, engineering and math. I had notebooks for each of them and had them draw/write examples for each category. Of course they quickly realized these overlap, and we had a great discussion about how they all work together.
We then went over the process we would be using for challenges. I just had them using composition notebooks to draw their designs, but if I were to redo it I would give them graphic organizers to be more intentional about following the steps.
Challenge #1
Our first challenge was spaghetti marshmallow towers. This is typically my first challenge with any new group of kids. I used these directions from Tinker Lab. Students worked with a partner and had to build the tallest possible tower from spaghetti, tape and string that could support a marshmallow.
These were my winners! As has always happened when I do this challenge, they were the ones who spent the most time talking and designing before they built. They also understood the importance of building a stable base, which was one of the greatest concepts I wanted the kids to learn through this challenge.
After the challenge was over I let them use the rest of the marshmallows and spaghetti to free build. They all really enjoyed this and got creative.
We took a break after this where the kids could eat their snack and then either go in the church game room (which has air hockey, foozball, and pool tables) or play with any of the building toys or games I had brought.
Tinker Toys were a hit!
Challenge #2
Using what we had learned about the importance of a stable foundation, we did another “tallest tower” challenge but this one using only paper and tape. (There is another variation where you give them only paper and no tape if you want a greater challenge.)
Challenge 3
The final Monday morning challenge was to create a paper table that could hold the most weight. I used instructions from Vivify STEM’s Starter STEM Challenges. Tables had to have at least 2 legs, stand at least 6 inches high and hold a heavy book for 5 seconds.
After lunch and outdoor play the kids were tired and hot and we played some games. As you know if you have spent any time on this site, games are my favorite way to practice math skills and I have a lot of them. In this pic they are playing Yahtzee.
To sum up day one of STEM camp, I overheard one of the boys say “This camp was way more fun than I thought it would be!”
