The world’s next great inventors might have just launched their careers in Port Washington.
Camp Invention, a nationwide summer program for children interested in science and engineering, returned to Sands Point last week for a second year.
Enrollment tripled this year to about 120 students from 43 last year, drawing students in kindergarten through sixth grade from Port Washington, Manhasset, Roslyn, Great Neck and Sea Cliff, said Rachel Gilliar, a Port Washington school board trustee who directs the weeklong program.
Camp Invention supplements typical science classes by offering an “open-ended,” hands-on curriculum based on studies of how real inventors played as kids, Gilliar said.
“The process is as important as the end product,” Gilliar said after the camp’s closing session last Friday. “It’s all about empowering them to think innovatively and to know that they can imagine something and build it.”
Gillar brought Camp Invention, a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, to Port Washington last summer after taking her 8-year-old daughters to the camp in Rockville Centre the year before. She wanted to make the “markedly different” camp more accessible to North Shore students, she said.
Hosted at the Community Synagogue in Sands Point, the program took students through four modules centered on this year’s theme: “Launch.”
They created and “terraformed” their own planets; learned about the laws of physics by building castles; took apart electronics to build their own devices; and designed their own inventions using duct tape and other “up-cycled” materials. Teachers also led several games throughout the week, Gilliar said.
Caleb Weiss, a rising third-grader, said his favorite activity was “Operation Keep Out,” in which participants gathered parts from different electronics to assemble their own alarms. The students collaborated and offered each other advice on how to solve the puzzle, Gilliar said.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame partners with 1,300 school districts in all 50 states to hold the camps, offering curriculum and guidance for staff, according to its website.
The Port Washington camp had five teachers, all of whom either teach in Port Washington schools or live in the district, Gilliar said. Some 14 Paul D. Schreiber High School students in grades 10 through 12 served as teaching interns, while another 9 local seventh- through ninth-graders participated as “counselors-in-training.”
The five-day program costs $270 per student. Seven of the Port Washington participants got scholarships this year, Gilliar said.
Camp Invention’s curriculum encourages students to solve problems without working toward just one solution, Jordan Wolf of Manorhaven, one of the teachers, said.
“With this, it’s a lot of fun to see them realize, ‘There is no right or wrong answer — it’s really up to my imagination,'” said Wolf, who teaches biology at the Flushing International High School in Queens. “That breaks down a lot of barriers for kids. The ones who are kind of reluctant to initiate learning, suddenly by the end of the week, they are the initiators of their own curiosity.”
The camp’s interactive approach drew Liz Weiss of Port Washington to enroll her son Caleb, 8, in Camp Invention for a second year, she said. While typical school lessons don’t excite him, he jumps at the chance to build things and take them apart, Weiss said.
“He loves to build and he loves to create, and he does that stuff at home, but it’s nice for him to do it in a structured environment … and [be] with his friends,” Weiss said.
Caleb said he “learned so many things,” during the week, but one lesson stood out: “Never give up.”
