SPI SCIENCE PLAY-SPACE INITIATIVE SPI SPOT
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2018 Summer Camps

Early bird registration for SPI annual and supporting members takes place on April 3rd only beginning at 9:30am-6:00 pm and will allow early registration for one camp per child.  Regular Registration begins on April 5.  To register your child fill out the easy pre-registration form that will be available and make an online payment. Your order will be fulfilled/processed when we have confirmed eligibility and placement.  You will then be required to fill out more detailed information about your child.  More detailed information is available below the chart.  We hope to provide additional camps later in April.
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Nature Play camps at the BFEC
​for primary school children (Enrollment 24/session)

Located at the Brown Family Environmental Center: Gambier, Ohio
Half-day camps will be from 8:30am-11:30am this year, earlier than last year. All camps are nature-play camps. Children will play in the river, creek, meadow, and pine forest. They will get wet and dirty and do all the things you wish kids these days still did outside - like climbing, running, catching frogs in the ponds, and playing in the river, even in the rain, without electronic devices. They will gain confidence, learn how to take risks safely, and improve their social skills in a natural environment, gaining experience, knowledge, and appreciation of our natural world. All instructors are elementary school teachers.

June 4-8:  Nature Play Camp, 8:30am - 11:30am, for children who will be ages 5-7 (includes all children starting kindergarten)
Instructors: Amy Kramp and Liz Bonaudi
June 11-15:  Nature Play Camp, 8:30am - 11:30am, for children ages 8-11
Instructors: Amy Kramp and Liz Bonaudi
June 18-22:  Nature Play Camp, 8:30am - 11:30am, for children ages 5-7 (includes all children starting kindergarten)
Instructors: Lori Zolman and Eileen Eilbacher
June 25-29: Nature Play Camp, 8:30am - 11:30am, for children ages 8-11
Instructors: Lori Zolman and Eileen Eilbacher
July 2, 3, 5, 6:  River Camp, 8:30am - 2:30pm, for children ages 8-11
Instructors: Lori Zolman, Amy Kramp, and Michelle Kramp
July 9-12: Family Camp, 8:30am - 11:30am, for children ages 5-11 (includes all children starting kindergarten) so that siblings can be together.
Instructors: (Lori Zolman or Amy Kramp) and Eileen Eilbacher

Tech and Science Camps for upper elementary and middle/high school (Enrollment 12/session)

Camps will be held upstairs at the Wright Center or Columbia School and will be instructed by Eric Vanderhoof, science teacher at Mount Vernon High School.

June 11-15 Android Code Camp / Advanced Code Camp For children finishing grades 5-11;  mornings Wright Center 2nd floor
Make your own apps! Android programs respond to screen touch, GPS, acceleration, and sound. Create games, art programs, life organizers, and more. No programming experience needed.
For older students, advanced code camp challenges students to develop apps that interact with the real world using raspberry pi computers. Perfect for students with some coding experience.


June 11-15 Lego Robotics Camp For children finishing grades 5-8; Afternoons
Kids love robots. Kids love legos. Lego robotics camp takes this love and channels it into a series of projects that introduce students to the engineering process (and helps them make really awesome robots to do their bidding). There will be both guided and free-build time using the lego NXT robotics system. Robot programming is done using an easy drag and drop interface.

June 25-29 Lego Simple Machines Session 1 For children finishing Grades 3-5; Mornings at Columbia Elementary School
Levers, gears, pulleys, and wheels. Simple machines are the basis for any budding engineer’s inventions. Use legos to explore how simple machines make our technology possible and our lives better. Each camp day includes a focus on a different simple machine, followed by an opportunity for creative free building.

June 25-29 Real World Chemistry
For children finishing grades 6-10 Afternoons at Columbia Elementary School
Chemistry is the art and science of transforming one material in into another and of understanding the nature of the physical world. To emphasize that this happens in the real world outside a  lab, real world chemistry will entirely use materials that can be found or bought in Mount Vernon stores. Students will extract and purify plant products, examine the interaction of light with matter, transform metals, and use solar power from grocery store purchases. No prior chemistry experience is necessary.

July 9-13 Rollers, Rockets, and Race cars - Physics in Motion For children finishing grades 3-5; Mornings at the Wright Center 2nd floor
Physics in Motion helps late elementary students understand motion in the world around them. By building roller coasters, rockets, fan cars, slingshots, spinning tops and hovercraft students will gain an understanding of mechanical energy and momentum. No prior physics experience needed. Students will take home their creations.

July 9-13 Electricity- Static, Circuit, and Electronics
For children finishing grades 4-6
Afternoons-Wright Center 2nd floor


Electricity powers the modern world. Electrical physics develops students’ concepts of electricity, first by zapping using static electricity, then by making electricity follow circuits through lights and motors, and finally by building basic electronics.  Several projects will be taken home.

July 23-27 Acoustics and Optics - The Physics of Sound and Light For children finishing grades 3-6 Mornings at the Wright Center 
We understand the world mostly through sound and light. This camp aims to help students learn to use and change the waves in the world around them. By using speakers, lasers, mirrors, lenses, and slinkies, we hope to really understand how musical instruments, surround sound, headlights, 3-D goggles, cameras, and microscopes bend vibrations in the world around us to our will. Several projects will be taken home.

July 23-27 Lego Simple Machines Session 2 For children finishing grades 3-5. Afternoons at the Wright Center 2nd floor​
Levers, gears, pulleys, and wheels. Simple machines are the basis for any budding engineer’s inventions. Use legos to explore how simple machines make our technology possible and our lives better. Each camp day includes a focus on a different simple machine, followed by an opportunity for creative free building.

Film Camp
for grades 7-10 (Enrollment 12)

Tentative: @ the Wright Center with Kenyon College's Film Department, grades 7-10. Full-day, June 25-29.

STEAM Camps

TBA
  • Welcome
  • About
    • Contact/Connect
    • Impact Report
    • Board of Directors and SPI Leadership
    • Employment >
      • Program Manager
      • Summer Enrichment Coordinator
      • Visitor Experience Associate (PT)
    • Board Portal
  • Visit
    • Visitor "Need to Know" Info
    • Membership Benefits
    • Financial Accessiblity Programs
    • ASTC Passport Members Welcome
    • COVID Reopening FAQs
  • Programs
    • SPI Camps 2025
    • SPI Camps 2024
    • Solar Eclipse Party at the Park 2024
    • SPI Camps 2023
    • SPI Camps 2022
    • 10 Year Celebration Open House and PRIZE Raffle!
    • SPI to Go
  • Support Us!
    • Buy a Family Membership
    • Make a Donation
    • Volunteer
    • Donor Recognition