Grades 3-6

MASTER INVENTORS
ENTERING GRADES 3-6

•Experiment with multi-day projects.

•Take brainstorming and problem-solving to new levels.

•Use advanced tools and materials independently.

•Collaborate with team members to solve challenges.

2008 Science, Art and Outdoor Themes

June 16-20
Dinosaurs Alive & There’s a Dream in My Closet

Dinosaurs Alive ::: Dinosaur Island

Put on your Paleontologist (Pay-lee-on-TALL-uh-jist) hat, and start digging for fossils on Dinosaur Island! Suddenly the ground shakes, and smoke rises from the volcano. Can you discover the hidden dinosaur secrets before the volcano erupts? Build a grid over the dig site, and chart the dinosaur bones that you find. Put the skeleton back together, and use clues to figure out what it ate and how it moved. Once you get back to camp, make a plaster cast of your dinosaur’s fossilized teeth, and build a working volcano too. Are there still dinosaurs alive today?!! (Learn about the science of paleontology).

There’s a Dream in My Closet ::: Dream Detective

Did you ever wake up from a great dream and wonder what it meant? Explore the dream-like artists of the Surrealist movement, and bring your best dreams to life. Create a Salvador Dali-style melting clock, and use Max Ernst as an inspiration to sculpt brightly colored “assemblages” from everyday junk. Make collograph prints in the style of Joan Miro to create amazing imaginary creatures. And craft vibrant fantasy food from everyday objects -- like shoelace spaghetti and beaded meatballs -- as Meret Oppenheim did with her Breakfast in Fur! When is a pipe not a pipe?!

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers

Jump into fun, outdoor activities every day. Participate in high-level team-building challenges. Work together as teams to keep an “atomic potato” off the ground, untie a human knot or walk together on a single pair of skis – just to name a few crazy challenges! Choose from skill-building activities, such as Klutz Hand Art and Contraptions too. On Friday, enjoy a monkey mascot mystery and Splashball!

June 23-27
Magic Toy Shop & Tricky Pix
Magic Toy Shop ::: Toys Alive! Inc.

You work for the world’s most famous toy company, Toys Alive! Inc., and you’re in charge of creating a new toy that every American child will love. Explore the Wonder Kids’ gallery of favorite toys, and discover what makes them so popular. Then build your own moving toys at the Toys Alive! Inc. studio. Create an action figure or doll with moving joints, a super spring-powered race track, a walking wind-up toy, and a hand-crank powered pop-up toy. Turn in your best toy design on Friday, and see if Toys Alive! Inc. will choose yours. Good luck! America’s toy-loving children are counting on you! You will learn about pushes and pulls, joints, springs and cogs, wind-up devices, hand-cranks, gravity, friction and “play appeal.”

Tricky Pix ::: Impossible Pictures

Everything is possible with trick photography, or “tricky pix!” Let the Wonder Kids monkey show you how! Make your own working pinhole camera to learn how cameras capture light. Then use a digital camera to create “impossible pictures.” In pictures, you will climb up a 30-foot brick wall, juggle cars and lions (and assorted objects of your choice), ride inside a sneaker and defy gravity! Use your imagination to create more impossible pictures, and the Wonder Kids monkey will help you make them real in our art studio. You will also take home a photo album of your projects, and learn how to use Adobe Photoshop to put the final touch on your pictures.

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers

June 30-July 3
Future World & Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Future World ::: Moving Marbles

Design and build Future World in the Wonder Kids Science Lab – and then connect it all together with a highway for marbles! Use simple machines to get your marbles from one side of the city to the other. Create tunnels, slides, bridges, elevators, and “spoon-a-pults” to get your marbles moving! Learn about simple machines, cantilever, beam and suspension bridge designs, and forces such as compression, tension, load and torsion. On Friday, will your marbles make it all the way across Future World on their own? Let’s roll!

Now You See It, Now You Don’t ::: Fun House Mirrors II (Fun House Mirrors I not required)

Use the power of mirrors to create an amazing fun house! Build a “mirror, mirror” machine, and see what your face looks like when you mix it up with your friend’s face! Amaze your friends with incredible toys that trick your eyes. Create a giant kaleidoscope and climb inside! Find out how a hologram works. Learn about the science of light, reflection, refraction, angles and optical illusions. Can you find your way out of the fun house?

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers

July 7-11
Lights! Camera! Laughter! & Cartoon Click
Lights! Camera! Laughter! ::: High School Musical Spoof (or the movie of your choice)

You work for a famous mouse-eared movie company, and your job is to make a funny film clip about a group of kids trying out for a high school musical. Let your creativity go wild, as you come up with hilarious ways to re-tell this story! (Or choose to make a movie with your own, original storyline). Brainstorm with your team to come up with plot twists, create a storyboard and script. Then direct, film, act in and edit your own movie using Moviemaker software – and it’s Lights! Camera! Laughter! Walk the red carpet on Friday to accept your Wonder Kids Academy Award for best comedy! (Note: Fully edited Wonder Kids DVDs of all 2008 camp movies will be sent home in early fall).

Cartoon Click ::: 3-D Animation

One day while playing on the computer, a little stick figure sends you a message! She’s begging you to help her get out of the 2-D Flat Land on your computer screen, and into the 3-D world! Learn how to create 3-D cartoon characters that appear to “pop” right off the screen, and rescue your stick-figure friend. Once you’ve gotten her out of computer Flat Land, then put her into a whole new 3-D setting. Now your character can swim through 3-D oceans, or fly through a 3-D starry sky – or whatever setting you create for her. Come up with an original story for your character, and you’ve got an amazing 3-D cartoon of your own! Make sure your lifelike character doesn’t climb into your backpack before leaving camp!

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers

July 14-18
To Fly! & Music in the Air
To Fly! ::: Flying Monkeys

How high can you fly? The Wonder Kids monkey wants the best view of camp that he can get. Humor him by inventing a way for him to get him way up high! Send him up on the best paper airplane you can make. Can you get the monkey any higher with a good water rocket? Try different kinds of aerodynamic fins. Try again by flying him up on a kite, and then design a way to land him safely with a parachute! On Friday, celebrate with the great “monkey drop.” Explore the physics of flight, propulsion, lift, drag and Bernouilli.

Music in the Air ::: Garage Band II (Garage Band I not required)

Some people dream of creating a garage band – and some dream of creating a band from stuff in the garage! Make amazing instruments from water bottles, PVC pipes, rubber bands, balloons and other stuff you find in the garage. Then tune these funky instruments to create a musical scale! On Friday, get ready to play a hilarious selection of favorite camp songs. You’ll be amazed at how good “On Top of Old Smokey” sounds on a water bottle!

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers

Jump into fun, outdoor team-building and craft activities every day. Work together as teams to keep an “atomic potato” off the ground, untie a human knot or walk together on a single pair of skis – just to name a few crazy challenges! Choose from skill-building activities, such as Klutz Hand Art and Contraptions too. On Friday, enjoy a monkey mascot mystery and Splashball!

July 21-25
Contraption Land & What’s the Big Idea?! (Abstract Art)
Contraption Land ::: Survivor

You’re on an African safari when your jeep breaks down! You must find a way to survive the African jungle and to get home, using only the tools and materials that you have on hand! Create a way to communicate with search planes in case they fly overhead. Since you’re hungry, invent a tool that will help you to reach fruit on the highest branches. Design a cloth that will hide you from the prowling lions who are hungry too! And cook up something to help you pull along your food and supplies over rough terrain. Use simple machines such as the lever, wheel & axle, and incline plane. Good luck!

What’s the Big Idea? ::: My Modern “Abstract” Room

At Wonder Kids, don’t miss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get advice from famous abstract artists as you decorate your room! Pablo Picasso provides the best ideas for creating an abstract portrait of yourself or your best friend. Alexander Calder’s colorful mobiles inspire you to make your own hanging mobile for your room. Make and wear a wild “splattered” t-shirt with Jackson Pollock, in the style of his famous drip paintings. By Friday, you’ll have a custom-designed, modern “abstract” room!

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers

July 28-August 1
Monster Cars & Castle Mystery
Monster Cars ::: Design, Build and Race Your Own Cars

In 1908, race car drivers started out on the “Great Race” all the way from New York to Paris – across deserts, mountains and jungles -- without modern highways or gas stations! Rev your engines in the Wonder Kids Science Lab, and get ready to build the best monster car that you can to make it over our own rugged obstacle course! Design, create and decorate a rubber band-powered car, balloon car, and battery operated car to make it through the Wonder Kids “swamp,” “desert” and “mountain range!” Then enter your favorite monster car in the Great Race on Friday! Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!

Castle Mystery ::: Monkey Castle

The Wonder Kids Monkey will be crowned king this week. He invites you to design and build a new castle for him! Go see some famous medieval castles, and choose the things you like best about them to put into your design. You’ll make a clay model of the monkey’s new castle, stained glass windows, painted portraits for the walls, and woven tapestries to decorate his royal primate home. The monkey will award a special prize to those who can solve the mystery of the missing royal bananas….

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers

August 4-8
Robotics & Sun Painting!
Robotics ::: Lego Mindstorms Robots

It’s the return of the Wonder Kids Jedi Robots! Design, build and program your Lego Mindstorm robots to capture space droids (tennis balls) and push them into the ship’s jail (basket). Extra points are awarded for excellent use of a light saber (using a stick to free a rubber band). Score an automatic win by rescuing Princess Leia (getting Lego Princess Leia into the cup)! You’ll learn how to program, design and build Lego Mindstorm robots (using simple visual click-and-drag commands). You’ll also learn about gears, wheels, axles and basic engineering principles.

Sun Painting ::: Go Wild With Color
You’re invited to a very colorful party on Fehmarn Island with a group of Expressionist painters! Ernst Kirchner will show you how to paint a vibrant city street with strangely colored people. His unusual colors show more how people feel than how they really look. Make a brightly colored paper cut-out collage with Vasily Kandinsky that seems to jump right off the canvas. Van Gogh will teach you how to make moody skies with lively lines using a “color swoosh” technique. Brush, smear, scrape and drip paint onto a canvas with everything but a paintbrush alongside Willem de Kooning! Enjoy your stay with these “emotional” artists, and make art that shows feelings which are hard to put into words. Learn how to use colors to show movement and strong emotions.

Master Inventors Outdoor Program ::: Master Adventurers