For the past week, rising third- through eighth-grade students have spent their summer learning about the principles of flight through hands-on activities in airplane design and propulsion.
Students have been participating in the “Fantastic Flying” session, where they’re able to build and test everything from water rockets, boomerangs and kites.
Andreka Johnson, communications specialist for ScienceSouth, said the camp is a part of the organization’s first series of summer camps for children.
“They’ve had a lot of fun,” Johnson said. “It’s been really well received. I lot of kids have repeated camps.”
On Wednesday, the students launched decorated rockets equipped with a parachute for safe landing.
Retha Kelly-Horne, education programs manager for ScienceSouth, said the camp helps students learn some of the basics of aviation, rocketry and physics.
“We’ve seen so much ingenuity and enthusiasm from these kids,” she said. “Hopefully, this is something they will take back with them ... and do it again and again.”
Kelly-Horne said the students who participated in the camp are able to keep the rockets they created to reuse at home.
Through these activities, Kelly-Horne said, students are able to apply what they learn in the camps to lessons that would be taught in the classroom when they return to school. Some areas include Newton’s Law and distinguishing between and solving problems involving velocity, speed and constant acceleration.
Kelly-Horne said the camps are designed to address areas students might have problems with in the classroom setting and areas that are of interest to them.
“Hopefully, they’ll remember a lot more of this when they get back to school,” she said. “We’re hoping it will pique their interests. We’re trying to make it as memorable as possible.”
Some of the children participating in the camp were sponsored by United Way of Florence County. The organization donated $10,000 for 40 children from low-income families to attend ScienceSouth’s summer camps.
ScienceSouth offers week-long camps for children in June and July. Next week, children will observe animals that live in their backyards by participating in bird watching activities, identifying animal tracks and dissecting owl pellets.
For more details on the camps, call Johnson at (843) 679-5353 or visit the Web site, www.sciencesouth.org.
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