A different theme is covered each day as highlighted below.
EARTH EXPLORATIONS
(Ages 4-6)
This is a great opportunity for inquisitive young minds to uncover the hidden stories in rocks, sand and fossils. Discover the world around us, from oceans to mountains and volcanoes to earthquakes. Have fun sifting for “gemstones” and uncovering dinosaur bones. Learn about the awesome forces of nature that shape our world and learn what fossils and shells tell us about the creatures of the earth. Take-home projects are created each day as we let imaginations soar.
Minerals
Young scientists will explore many different types of rocks and minerals as we learn cool facts about each type. Learn what fossils and shells tell us about the creatures of the earth. Campers will sift for stones and design their very own unique bracelet that they will take home.
Dinosaurs
In this introduction to dinosaurs, we will dig for “dinosaur remains”, learn about what dinosaurs eat, and take home our own dinosaur tooth! Compare yourself with the size of a dinosaur! Just how big were they?
Ocean Animals
Today we will explore the farthest depths of the oceans and lakes that surround us! Campers will create their own piece of underwater life. We will see how starfish and sand dollars compare as blooming biologists get their own to decorate and take home.
Volcanoes
Today campers will discover some of the forces of nature that shape our earth. They will encounter some of the wonders of pressure as they make a canister act as a “mini volcano”. Campers will be thrilled to learn about our gigantic Mad Science volcano as it erupts before their eyes! All will build a reusable volcano kit to take home.
Earthquakes
Campers will dig into the world of earthquakes, build an earthquake proof house, and do some shaking and quaking ourselves on this fun day! Find out about tectonic plates as you play a fun, interactive game. Discover how the land was formed and shaped millions of years ago. Take an “earthly” project home with you.
LET’S GET GROWING
(Ages 4-6)
New Camp!
Campers explore the different parts of a garden and learn all about seeds, soil, and sprouts. The group will examine fruits, vegetables, plants and leaves using a microscope designed for preschoolers. Children also learn about interesting creatures that live in a garden like butterflies, ladybugs and bees and learn how these insects can help a garden grow. Take home projects include a seed bag, sun visor, bean necklace, veggie place mat and bug necklace.
Soil and Seeds
Learn all about what is under a garden in this fun filled day! You will dissect soil and discover its components. Play a super seed relay game! Observe the life cycle of a seed with hands-on activities. Make your own super seed expert badge!
Sun, Wind and Rain
Investigate the elements as you discover what they do for gardens. Make your own sun visor so you will be protected from the sun. Become a weather artist using rain and wind as your tools!
Plants and Leaves
Get ready to grow! Learn all about living plants and leaves. Discover the art of rubbings. Play a leaf sorting game, as you learn about their differences. Grow your own budding bean necklace to take home with you.
Butterflies, Bees, and Ladybugs
Get ready to see and make some bugs and creepy crawlers. Explore the life of a caterpillar as you discover how it turns into a beautiful butterfly. Make your own bug bracelet!
Flowers, Fruits, and Veggies
Discover the difference between fruits and vegetables with your own placemat. Learn super songs to sing about nature. Make a mural of the garden with your fellow campers. Bring home your own journal that you use to keep track of everything you unearthed.
SIZZLING SUMMER SCIENCE!
(Ages 6-11)
Fresh Content!
Children will discover that science is all around us…from nature and animals to buildings and sports! A different theme will be explored each day as we discover in fun ways how science applies to each topic. Explore the Animal Kingdom and learn about protecting our earth. Use nature to create cool colorful Mad Science t-shirts! Learn about nature’s strongest structures and our own natural abilities. The world will never look quite the same after attending this camp.
Birds and Beasts and Fish, Oh My!
Campers will make their own animal tracks, eat like a bird and build their own glider. Study Biology as you become an ornithologist and discover the unique characteristics of birds. Investigate feathers to see how birds fly. Dissect owl pellets to find out what they eat. From their habits to their habitats, campers will explore the science of the Animal Kingdom.
Jr. Engineers
Structures are all around you, everywhere you look and everywhere you go! Join a team of scientists to inspect the elements of structures as you build, test, and yes, even eat some structures you create. Climb inside a geodesic dome that you construct with fellow campers. Build a Soma cube puzzle that may even stump your parents!
Science of Sport
Jump right into the science behind sports. Today campers will experiment with games and see how physics, biology and chemistry can affect athletes and their equipment. Campers will work to protect an egg and then put their protection to the test in an egg toss! They will turn polymer powder into a bouncing ball and will get a cool Hydration Station to keep them well hydrated!
Earth Awareness
Learn all about pollution and what it does to our planet. Determine what big problems a little pollution can cause with a lake in a bottle. Unearth pollution solutions and other ways to help our planet. Bake nachos with solar power and make your own recycled paper.
Nature
Let your nose be your guide on a trail of scents. Follow the clues on this aromatic path. Experiment with natural dyes that you can find in fruits and veggies. Decorate your Mad Science T-Shirt with all the colors that nature has to offer. Use jaws and claws to feed your beastly stomach.
SCIENCE IN MOTION
(Ages 6-11)
New Camp!
Jump into science with some explosive topics! This camp will explore a different theme each day. Create a crystal garden out of common household items and use chromatography to make a camp T-shirt. Apply your skills to make a camera obscura that will help you to understand how a camera works. Assemble and control pulleys, levers, catapults and mega-pinchers! Use the machines you create to feed yourself and shoot ping-pong balls! Break codes and take a giant leap into space with this exciting adventure!
Crazy Chemistry
Today campers will explore the science of color and chemistry. Campers will experiment with every day chemical reactions. Create a crystal garden out of common household items and design your own Tie-dye Mad Science T-shirts!
Machine Mania
Investigate the world of simple machines as you learn that machines are helpful for work or play! Assemble and control pulleys, levers, catapults and mega-pinchers! Use the machines you create to feed yourself and shoot ping-pong balls! Operating your simple machines will make work seem like play.
Shutterbugs!
Explore the use of light to utilize more than one form of photography. Learn about refraction and shading. Apply your skills to make a camera obscura that will help you to understand how a camera works. Get artistic with a diazzo chamber and create a print to take home.
Space Day
Test soil for "Martian" life. Experiment with space suit design. Get a taste for space and eat like the astronauts when you make your own space snack. Create your own water spraying engine! Become Mission Control and help your fellow campers accomplish their space tasks.
Mad Messages
Decipher the world around you as you learn different ways to send mad messages. Use Morse code to send secret transmissions to your friends and to interpret secret messages from them. Discover the mystery of the Mad Science Message Wheel. Experiment with cool color-changing goldenrod paper.
CSI: DETECTIVES
(Ages 6-11)
Fresh Content!
It’s elementary Watson” for children to become super sleuths to solve a “crime”! Use techniques from forensic science to fill the shoes of a detective in this fun-filled “who dunnit” program. Build a detective tool kit and use it to collect and analyze evidence from crime scenes. The “unusual” suspects will be narrowed down as the week progresses until we solve the crime and bring the camp to a sweet conclusion!
Cell City
Take a fantastic trip into cell city. Learn about cells and the different parts within them. You will compare the parts of a cell to a real city as you investigate its different functions. Build your own take home model cell out of unique materials. Even your snack will be a fun cell model you can eat!
Chemical Counting
Get ready for a day in the Mad Science Laboratory! Turn a lemon into a battery. Experiment with electrochemical reactions, as you electroplate a penny and a nickel. Learn how chemical elements help you to create chemical compounds. Put your new chemistry know-how to work as you make your own brain goo“!
The Organ Trail
Do you know the recipe for a healthy body? You will after you journey down the Mad Science Organ Trail. Come to camp and meet "Tall Paul"! Paul is a torso model that can have his organs removed and replaced. Paul’s brains, bones, lungs, heart, and digestion systems will all be investigated. Make a gutsy apron and a model lung to take home.
Radical Reactions
Ready, set, reactions! Learn with hands-on reactions that matter is never created or destroyed. Make a colorful chemical rainbow and get power from a potato. Experiment with chemical bonds and discover conductivity.
Scene of the Crime
Team up with fellow campers to solve the “Great Cookie Caper” crime. Arrive at camp to find a real crime scene surrounded by crime scene tape. Walk the grid and collect evidence to solve the crime. All of your observation skills will be needed as you use your new magnifying glasses and notebooks to record your evidence. Use your forensic skills to solve the crime and make your own cookie snack.
TOP GUN FLIGHT ACADEMY
(Ages 6-11)
Children will have a hands-on experience exploring how different types of aircraft and other objects that fly. Basic principals of flight and aerodynamics will be investigated by building airplanes, testing them in wind tunnels, building a hovercraft and balloon copter. Investigate how early “pilots” navigated while building a sextant and sundial. Campers will take home a rubber band-powered airplane, various paper airplane designs, balloon copters, boomerangs and mini Frisbee™. End the week by putting together everything we have learned by building an intermediate level Estes™ rocket.
The Wright Stuff
Children will explore the fundamentals of aerodynamics in this hands-on program about how things fly. From the basic principles of flight to building airplanes and testing them in wind tunnels, children will understand what makes things fly and how different types of aircraft fly. Campers will take home a rubber band-powered airplane, various paper airplane designs, boomerangs and mini Frisbees™.
Up, Up, and Away
This program will explore the role that wind and the movement of air plays on simple flying devices such as kites, hot air balloons and parachutes. Children will experiment with solar bags and parachutes and build their own kites during this hands-on look at early flight.
Milky Way
What is the Milky Way and how do we know what’s up there? Children will explore the celestial sphere, learn about celestial navigation and build their own sextant and sundial while discovering the wonders of the Milky Way.
Newton’s Loco-Motion
Sir Isaac Newton was very curious about how things move. Discover Newton’s Laws of Motion and something called inertia in this hands-on program all about motion. Children will experiment to learn how inertia works and how gravity is a physical force that keeps all objects “stuck” to the Earth. They will also decorate their Mad Science T-Shirts this day!
Rockin’ Rockets
Campers will learn the fundamentals of rocketry throughout this day including the parts of a rocket, the stages of rocket flight and how Newton’s third law applies to a rocket traveling to space. The children will build their own rockets which they will also get to launch during this fun-filled finale!
BLAST OFF TO SPACE!
(Ages 6-11)
Budding rocket scientists will explore the fundamentals of rocketry and space travel. Learn about outer space as we look at the stars and solar system. Work on projects to take home including a simple telescope, a propeller-powered space orbiter and a fully functional rocket. Build and launch different types of rockets during the week and on the last day of camp, launch the solid fuel rocket you built into space and watch it return to earth by parachute before taking it home to show your friends.
Rocket Scientists
Children will step into the shoes of a rocket scientist and learn the fundamentals of propulsion and rocket design. Today they will begin examining altitude and create their own tool to measure how high their rockets can go!
Mission Control
Children will discover the fundamentals involved in launching rockets during this program. They will further explore the concepts of altitude and altitude tracking and begin to build their own Estes® Skyblazer rockets.
Astronaut Training
Children will get the chance to finish constructing their own Estes® Alpha rockets during this hands-on look at rocketry and space travel. Campers will learn about Newton’s laws of motion, about the history of space travel and how some space vehicles work. They will also design their own indoor launching craft!
Mission Recovery
Campers will focus on recovery systems for rockets along with a continuing exploration of Newton’s laws of motion and how they apply to rockets in flight. They will build a model of Saturn and witness a wet and wild water bottle rocket launch!
Go for Launch!
Campers will continue their exploration of rocketry in this hands-on program by focusing on rocket transportation systems and rocket staging. After building a Blast Off Racer challenge fellow campers with they will get to launch their own Estes® Skyblazer rocket.
RED HOT ROBOTS
(Ages 8-12)
Fresh Content!
Join us for a week of thrills with amazing robots where we will explore how robots are used in our world and have fun experimenting with super cool sound sensing robots, line-tracking robots and amphibious robots. Young scientists will discover the science of electronic circuits and how robots use sensors to explore things around them. Build your very own rockin’ robot and test out your new friend on an obstacle course before taking it home at the end of the week. The different areas covered over the week include:
Robot Concepts
Roll your way into robot science. Experiment with different robot designs, as you learn what makes a robot work. Invent your own robot designs using recycled materials.
Robot Basics
Discover the world of robots as we investigate the differences between humans and their robotic counterparts. What makes a robot work will be explored during hands-on activities and discussions.
Robot Building
Each day some time will be spent perfecting a real working robot that we will finish and take home on Friday. We will be using our fine motor skills and we require that campers be entering the second grade so they do not become frustrated with construction.
Red Hot Robots
Hands-on activities will include fun time with our robots. We will play games and experiment with super cool robots such as a soccer robot, a line tracker, a hyper peppy, and a robotic arm.
Robotic Science
Campers will learn how robots use infrared and other sensors to discover the environment they are placed. Working in groups we will explore how robots work and how they can make our lives easier.
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