The sound of laughter and shouts of joy filled the front lawn of Redmond’s Faith Lutheran Church and School Friday afternoon as children splashed each other with water-soaked sponges.
While the water fight was a great way to cooling down now that the sun has come out, these youngsters were doing more than beating the heat. They were creating a simulation of sea turtles swimming through an ocean current.
This was just one of many education-based activities they took part in as attendees of Camp Invention, a week-long day camp program in partnership with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The camp was for first- through sixth-graders and — just as the name implies — focused on inventing. Throughout the week, campers learned about real-world geographical, environmental and ecological problems and were prompted to think up and create a solution.
“It’s really important to keep in mind that these things took a lot of thinking,” said Camp Invention Director Barbara Deming.
While welcoming parents and other family members to a special inventors’ showcase event at the end of camp on Friday, she told them the kids took the time to draw plans and put a lot of thought into their inventions. This process should be appreciated just as much as the finished products, Deming told parents.
She added that by creating something designed for a specific purpose, kids will learn and retain knowledge better.
Campers were also encouraged go bring old appliances and electronics from home to Camp Invention, where they did a little “reverse engineering” to see how the items worked and then repurposed the parts to build a new invention. This year, the kids built duck-chucking devices, which were used to launch rubber duckies across a classroom and into designated buckets.
Deming, who is also principal of Faith Lutheran School, said Camp Invention provides the supplies such as goggles, tools, batteries and motors that the kids will be using throughout the week. The camp is run by certified teachers. This year’s staff included two teachers from Faith Lutheran and one from Kirkland Middle School. Campers are divided by age group and Deming said the curriculum is the same across the board, but the teachers tailor the lessons for each group.
“That is very different from most camps,” Donna Kalyan said about the educational aspect of Camp Invention.
Kalyan, whose son and daughter attended the camp, was a parent volunteer for the camp.
She said her kids have told her that Camp Invention is the “best camp (they’d) ever been to” because they’re learning. As a parent, she said she likes the camp because it gets her daughter into math and science — which are more male-dominated fields — and nurtures her son’s curious nature and habit of questioning how things work.
“We’re really pleased,” Kalyan said.
Stasi Benhow, whose two sons attend Mark Twain Elementary School in Kirkland and attended Camp Invention — one for the third time and one for the first time — also likes that the kids learn at the camp.
“It’s a unique camp,” she said. “It’s not just your regular day camp or summer camp.”
Benhow added that in budgeting for the summer and what activities to participate in, her older son Josh said Camp Invention is the only camp he absolutely has to attend.
“I just love it because you invent stuff,” he said.
Although the camp was held at Faith Lutheran, most of the 57 campers were from other schools. Camp Invention was previously held at Mark Twain and so many of the campers this year are from the Lake Washington School District and throughout the Eastside.
