Pierceton Elementary 3rd grade students Dillon Sutton and Abigail Griffith collaborate to craft and operate a fan powered cart.

LARWILL —  This week 64 elementary students from Pierceton and South Whitley joined together to attend Camp Invention. Students have been building and creating using recyclable materials. This is known as “Upcycling” at Camp Invention. Wednesday morning, one group of boys even constructed an entire hockey game using some of their upcycling materials.

“Our enrollment increased this year by 20 kids.” celebrated Camp Director Ashley Roberts. Roberts teaches at Whitko as the Project Lead the Way instructor for both Pierceton and South Whitley Elementary schools.

Camp Invention consists of four break out sessions each day, and students rotate in groups hosted by Whitko Middle School student volunteers and teachers from both PES and SWE. Each session has its own exciting activities encouraging the students to continue to build onto their previous day’s accomplishments. 

“Operation Keep Out” is part of the rotation. It’s a project which allows students to bring in a “take apart” item and then see what’s inside! Students brought in CD players, corded telephones, DVD players, wind-up clocks, radios, and other electronic devices and began taking them apart to see how they work. Through this experience they were introduced to tools, and the process of using the tools to take apart and even fix something. Then they work together to identify what they are seeing inside their “take apart” item such as capacitors, boards, chips, wires, speakers, magnets and more.

In the next activity, “Duct Tape Billionaire,” students are challenged by National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductee JD Albert via video feed to use duct tape to create their own duct tape accessories business.  The experience allows students to earn funny money and they are introduced to the entrepreneurial spirit.

“Mission Space Makers” allows the students wrestle with the idea that planets could be transformed to be Earth-like and habitable! Students connect with this innovative science by becoming an Exploranaut who terraforms planets, launches rockets, and journeys through space. 

Next, students harnessed the power of air and water pressure to launch rockets. Whitko Community Schools has posted a video of the camp on their Facebook page so parents can watch for their children having fun at the camp and even laugh as the students launch their rockets and get a little wet in the process.

At the end of each day, the staff send home with each student “The Camp Invention Daily.” The handout is a brief summary of the day’s experiences. Then parents can read all about the events and activities their children have participated in throughout the day. The Camp Invention Daily also gave parents a way to connect with their child using three discussion questions to enjoy at home.