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MINDS games keep kids sharp between school years Summer camp teaches how to apply science to real life Potentially ho-hum topics such as height, weight and volume are flavored with fun this week at the annual summer MINDS Camp in Aberdeen. It stands for Math In Daily Science Camp, and 28 children in grades three through five are participating this summer at Roncalli Elementary School. The daily morning camp started Monday and ends today. "I like the games we play," said camper Whitney Rosebrock, 9, after participating in a bucket brigade of sorts outside the school with wonderfully cool water.
"They love getting wet when it's so hot," said Marie Schumacher, one of the camp leaders and a fourth-grade teacher at Roncalli. The kids divided into two lines, with each camper holding a plastic cup. An ice cream pail full of water was placed at the start of each line. An empty pail stood at the end of each line. Campers dipped water from the full pails and passed it down the line, pouring from cup to cup, until it all ended up in the other pails -- well, maybe most of it. There was an academic point to the exercise. At its end, students measured the volume of water in each pail to determine which team had passed the most water from one pail to another. The theme of the camp is "Take the Mystery out of Measurement." The theme changes every year, but the point is always to apply science to real life, Schumacher said. She and Sandy Ullrich, a third-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School, now lead the grant-funded camp that started in summer 2000. MINDS came to be after a survey of parents showed they wanted a summer academic camp for their children to complement numerous sports camps during the summer, Schumacher said. McKinley Livermont, 12, Aberdeen has attended MINDS every year since it began. She'll be in sixth grade this fall, so she's too old to be a camper. But she liked it so much she's back this year as its sole junior leader -- a position she requested. "It's fun to learn things and do all the activities,"
Livermont said.
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