Throughout the week of July 22, the National Inventors Hall of Fame held its Camp Invention at Moorestown Upper Elementary school. The program provides an experience for children to learn the importance of intellectual property while exploring, crafting and designing with hands-on activities.
Since 1990, the nonprofit organization has encouraged children entering kindergarten through fifth grade to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum inspired by some of the world’s greatest inventors. According to its website, the program has served more than 1.5 million children and 170,000 teachers and leadership interns.
“Camp invention is a nationwide program,” said Camp Director Ray Kucklinca. “This is my 11th year doing this, and the camp is about inventing, creating, using you imagination to create different things. The nice thing about the curriculum is that it changes every year.”
This year the curriculum consisted of four projects entitled Innovation Force, Deep Sea Mystery, Farm Tech, and DIY Orbit. The Innovation Force projects includes campers who have been transformed into superheroes to battle the evil Plagiarizer, a super-villain who is out to steal the world’s greatest ideas. As children create a device to retrieve the stolen ideas, they learn about the importance of intellectual property and the U.S. patent system.
With the Deep Sea Mystery, children embark on a research adventure at sea to dig up fossils, but they soon find themselves stranded on an island. Using lessons and advice from NIHF inductees, they invent island survival tools and underwater equipment.
Farm Tech includes the campers being put in charge of managing their own farm as they learn the basics of running a business. With the assistance of the Bot-ANN-E robot, they learn fundamental coding techniques to maximize their time and profits. Children also are introduced to DNA synthesis, where they perform their own mock experiment to check the health of their newly purchased cattle.
Lastly, with the DIY Orbit robot the children explored frequency, circuit boards, motors and gears as they use real tools to reverse-engineer a remote-control robot. Throughout the week, campers adapted their DIY “Orbot” to perform increasingly challenging tasks.
“I really enjoy seeing the kids come up to me and say, ‘oh, this is what I invented, this what I created,’” said Kucklinca. “I teach earth science in Moorestown High School and STEM is the buzzword right now. What I’ve noticed over the years is that as the girls get older, they don’t do the science stuff anymore. I’ve been teaching for 25 years and my female students are usually the best students. So when we’re here I try really spark that passion.
“I think it’s starting to change,” Kucklinca continued. “I think more women are starting to get into STEM fields, and hopefully this program is making an impact on them early. Seeing the excitement on the kids when they make something is great and that’s really why I do it.”
