Home

Steamboat Springs — Seven-year-old Sophie Leeson's hair was dyed bluish-green Wednesday, tied into several ponytails all over her head.

"It's crazy hair day," she said. "You get to make your hair really crazy, and you get to dye it and stuff."

Crazy hair day was Wednesday's theme at Camp Invention, held last week at Strawberry Park Elementary School. Each day's theme at the camp was designed as another way to engage the children, said Director Kris Rowse.

The weeklong summer day camp, in its first year in Steamboat Springs, emphasizes creative problem solving and critical-thinking skills through hands-on activities in the STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - fields.

"It's learning disguised as fun," said Rowse, who brought the camp to Steamboat after her two children attended the camp in Boise, Idaho, before they moved to town. "The kids have no idea they're actually learning, using words like velocity and motion, in a summer science experience."

First- through sixth-graders are separated into groups by grade and rotate through five activities each day. The activities include creating a fictional city, figuring out what to do when your spaceship crash lands on an imaginary planet, inventing something from an old appliance and building a rollercoaster, in addition to team-building exercises held outdoors.

"This is where the kids get to do hands-on activities all day and be messy," said camp teacher Rebecca Dybas, who teaches third-grade at Soda Creek Elementary School during the school year. "During a regular school day, there's not as much time for science this chaotic and fun."

The campers agreed.

"It's fun," said 6-year-old Shayla Renz. "You get to play and build stuff."

Madeline Boucher, 10, spent an hour Wednesday taking apart an old CD player. She'll use the parts to invent a device that will launch an egg into a frying pan, hopefully breaking it.

"I like how it's problem solving," she said about the outfits and shelters they designed to stay safe from a storm on the imaginary planet where their spaceship landed.

Camp teacher Phyllis Cron, who was supervising the campers' inventions, said some campers have even gotten frustrated at times. Unlike a regular classroom setting where there's a problem and solution, she said, things aren't quite as simple at Camp Invention.

"The fun thing about this is the kids have an open-ended opportunity to solve a problem," said Cron, who works as the gifted and talented teacher at Steamboat Springs High School during the school year. "Almost any answer is right."

Annie Kavanaugh, who is working at the camp, said she signed up her 10-year-old daughter Ellie because it was completely new and different than anything else offered in Steamboat.

"She's learning all sorts of new things, new concepts, new ideas," Kavanaugh said. "It's getting her to think outside the box. And with her friends, coming together to do something in a fun way."

Rowse worked with the regional director for Camp Invention to organize everything before Monday's start. She hired five local teachers and trained them in the camp's curriculum. She also hired 10 staff members and 4 junior volunteers, Steamboat Springs Middle School students barely too old to participate.

Camp Invention was offered last year at more than 1,000 locations in 48 states. It was created in 1990 by a joint effort of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The success of the camp - enrollment was full at 110 students just two months after it was announced - may allow Rowse to offer more than one session next year, she said. And Camp Invention has different programs that would allow campers to experience something different if they elected to come back next year, Rowse said.

Camper Zoe Sullivan, 9, had a suggestion for next year. Zoe said she wished the camp was overnight.

"It's fun," she said. "It's very fun."