Our Curious campers focused on literature during our Level Up Courses. The first week was more nature based storytelling and stories. Both weeks we focused on the Design cyle- imagine, brainstorm, plan, build, and test and improve. The students have been exploring stories throughout the week and using the design cycle for engineering challenges related to the BIG PROBLEM in each story. We noticed that sometimes we need to put ourselves in the characters shoes as we think about our designs. Sometimes when we were building, our plan did not always work and we would go back and think about have to change things and improve our designs. It was fun to work test out our designs!
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Reimagine Ingredients: Our campers enjoyed a morning of mixing and messy fun! We mixed water and soil to make interesting mud concoctions. Some of our campers were making potions, pies, and cakes! We enjoyed playing together in our outdoor kitchen. When we were done we had fun with the hose spraying down the tables and tools. Some of our little campers wanted to be hosed down too!
STACKING We explored different ways to build and used different materials to build with this week. Our 2 year old campers made sculptures today. They explored stacking cheerios. It was fun to see our creations grow into tall structures. BUILDING CHALLENGES Our 3 and 4 year old campers took on a challenge to see how high they can build using mini cups and popsicle sticks. It was fun and exciting to use the measuring tape and record our data! WATER WALL We worked together to add to our water wall here at camp! We used recyclable materials and made new ways for the water to travel along our fence. One of the greatest, most diverse animal constructions we explored was the incredible animal home, the nest. After recording our thinking about what kind of animals make nests and how they do it, we were able to see up close some examples including a robin’s nest and a weaver bird’s nest made almost entirely of fishing line!
We brainstormed questions we were curious about, and set out to to see how hard it could really be create a nest of our own. After all, we have two hands, and birds only have their beaks and feet! We took a walk and gathered materials that we thought a bird might choose like twigs, grass, vines, milkweed, and a whole lot of mud! The following day we got our hands dirty (literally) and started building nests. Some students chose to make small tightly woven nests, like the humming bird, and others made large mud-walled bowls lined with soft insulation to keep any potential eggs safe and warm. Everyone seemed to agree that even with the ability to use our hands, making a nest was no easy task! Our Curious Campers learned to use the Stop Motion App on our ipads and began their film making process by discussing what they noticed and what they wondered as we watched some inspirational examples of stop motion animation created by kids just like them! They then created their first films by animating a word of their choice. We quickly graduated to claymation, and the kids sculpted a character with the challenge to make it walk, crawl, or fly. They really went above and beyond and created some great little shorts. As a final project, the students worked in groups to come up with a story that included all the major story elements, designed and created their characters and sets, directed and animated their masterpiece. We hope you will enjoy watching these videos as much as we did making them! We were inspired by Eric Carle and the Very Hungry Caterpillar to make a play. Please watch the video and enjoy! |
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August 2019
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