Learning camps return to science museum this summer
In-person camps are coming back to Mid-America Science Museum this summer, with seven planned, the museum’s director of education said.
“Last year we were only able to do four camps, but this year we are expanding to seven,” Casey Wylie said. “They are in-person, we are not offering any virtual camps this year.”
The seven camps include “Minecraft IRL (In Real Life),” “Mad Scientist Lab,” “ScienceMakes-ART (SMART),” “Techtastic,” “Down and Dirty,” “Inventor’s Workshop” and “Magic for Muggles.”
“Last year there didn’t seem to be a big demand, so far there’s been a huge demand for summer camp. We actually have a couple that are close to full,” Wylie said.
“Get your reservations in soon; they are going to fill up quickly,” she said.
“Each camp is going to be split by age,” Wylie said, noting one group will be for children ages 6 to 9, and a group for children ages 10 to 12.
“Each group will have a maximum of 15 students,” she said. “We’re doing seven full weeks of camp starting the second week of June all the way up to the second week of August.”
“I can’t wait for a summer where we’re getting to interact with the kids,” she said.
Several of the camps have previously been held at the museum.
“We are repeating a couple of our more popular ones,” she said, including the “Minecraft” and “Harry Potter” camps and “SMART.” However, she noted the camps will not be exactly the same as they were in the past.
“We’ll have some different stuff, even if you did them last year, you’ll have a different experience this time,” Wylie said.
New camps include “Down and Dirty,” which is “the science of everything underground — rocks, dirt, worms, bugs,” Wylie said, “Inventors Workshop,” which will “kind of be based on our Tinkering Studio,” “Techtastic” which will look at “all things tech — robot, coding” and “Mad Scientists Lab” which is “kind of more chemistry based. It’s our slimy one.”
Wylie said “Mad Scientists Lab” is “kind of my favorite, I love oozy stuff,” while “9-year-old me would have been all about the “Down and Dirty,” and the “Minecraft” one was the most fun to plan.
While the camps will be held in-person, Wylie said there will be several safety precautions in place.
“We will still be requiring masks for staff and campers. We’ll be doing temperature checks. Anyone who has a fever, we’re not going to allow into camp that day,” she said, noting they are also limiting the size of each camp to 15 campers “so they can be well spread out.”
The smaller camp sizes, reduced from 25 participants in past outings pre-COVID-19, will likely continue after the pandemic, she said.
Last year, when the camps were down to 10 participants, Wylie said they learned a “smaller child to adult ratio is a lot better, so we get less kids total, which is a bummer, but everybody is getting a much better experience.”
“It’s all about the quality, not the quantity,” she said.
Camps are $200 per camp for museum members, and $225 for nonmembers.