Summer camps in Waco concentrate on technical projects
Photography, space, gaming and electricity are themes
WACO, Texas—At her recent summer camp, Brooke Griffin, 11, learned how to create and design her own board game.
“It’s called School Escape,” Brooke said. “The mission is to escape school.”
The Waco Tribune-Herald reports with school out for summer, Brooke said she is happy to be at camp “making things” and not at home “doing nothing.”
As Brooke designed the game’s logo on a computer at Maker’s Edge Makerspace, she explained that her board game concept involves two players and a variety of cards.
“There’s a detention card where you can make a player go to detention and skip one turn, and I haven’t figured out how the principal is going to work, but if you get caught by the principal you lose,” she said.
At Maker’s Edge, under the guidance of trained professionals, Brooke cut the materials for her board and fastened them together.
When finished with her design, the instructors showed the campers how etch their personal logo onto the wooden boards.
The summer camp teaches students to use 3D printing, laser cutting, computer numerical control machines and more traditional metal and woodworking tools to design and fabricate a variety of projects.
There will be four weeks of camps, each with its own theme.
The opening week was called “FTW (for the win) Gaming Summer Camp” with a focus on gaming and programming skills. Campers made cornhole sets and board games from scratch, then painted their assembled products.
Another week, a space themed camp will be offered, Maker’s Edge office manager Jessica Escobedo said.
“They are going to take VR (virtual reality) goggles and learn how to program a rover and they won’t be controlling it like a drone. It will be a smart functioning robot, and they will get to watch it go through various obstacles and terrains as well as rockets and stuff. That’s the big project.”
Each week the students get to work on a big project and take home smaller projects they create daily, Escobedo said.
During another week, the campers will create their own Polaroid camera using 3D printing. The photography themed camp will focus on light, how light works, the basic mechanics of a camera and the fundamentals of photography.
The final week of camp, students will learn how electricity works while making steam-punk goggles and a mini Tesla coil.
Lydia Pardun, a Marker’s Edge worker and daughter of the owners, said she enjoys the creativity the summer campers bring.
“They are always really creative in ways that you wouldn’t even think of,” Pardun said. “They always come up with really cool ideas.”
The campers leave with more than just their DIY projects. They leave with a sense of accomplishment, Escobedo said.
“It cultivates creativity, I’d say, and this is technically the future,” Escobedo said. “If you’re going into engineering, you are going to want to know how things are made if you are going to design things to be made.”
Regardless of the industry a child wants to go into, the ability to take a concept from idea to reality is an important skill, instructor Zack Manweiler said.
“It’s a great place to take stuff in your head and make it real,” Manweiler said.
If you’re going into engineering, you are going to want to know how things are made if
you are going to design things to be
made.” — Jessica Escobedo,
Maker’s Edge office manager