The halls are alive with the sounds of young engineers as the UAlberta Faculty of Engineering's DiscoverE camps opened this week.
(Edmonton) This year's DiscoverE summer camps could not get any better: over 1,000 projects - some new, some back in rotation from previous years - covering the fundamentals of engineering, general sciences, and technology, will have summer campers feeling fascinated and inspired.
"Everything's brand new. No camper will ever see the same project," said Keely McPhee, camp and workshop co-ordinator and associate director of DiscoverE.
With the summer camps kicking off this week, campers and their parents are flocking to the Engineering Teaching and Learning Centre to check in. The young engineering campers are eagerly anticipating a week of making friends and making new discoveries.
"I'll be studying fossils," says one of the youngest campers.
"And I'll be doing Girls Coding Club," adds an aspiring programmer.
"My son did Android programming camp two summers in a row and loved it," one of the moms says, as a DiscoverE volunteer is escorting her son to join his camp buddies. Now, she's carpooling with a friend who signed up her own son for a coding camp for the first time.
From building electric cars, to dissecting organs, playing around with hexaflexagons, exploring the fascinating properties of shark skin, engineering Android apps and designing games, there's a lot in store for campers.
"There are 25 different camps, between nine and 11 each week," adds McPhee. The full list of the camps can be found here.
The main objective behind all DiscoverE programs is to engage kids of all ages and backgrounds in hands-on exploration of engineering and science. "They can be scary and big concepts, so we really just want to make kids understand that these can be fun and hands on, and these are all the cool things you can do," says McPhee.
DiscoverE projects are tailored to fit the needs and match the abilities in four age groups: mini camps for Grades 1 and 2, junior camps for Grades 3 and 4, intermediate camps for Grades 5 and 6, and senior camps for Grades 7 and 9.
"For all of the camps, our main goal is to get kids excited about engineering, science, technology, and math. For minis, for Grades 1 and 2, we really focus on fun, we focus on making camps the best days of their week," says McPhee. The older campers get, the more their projects become about connecting the dots and discovering new ways of doing things. "For our Grades 7 to 9 camps, it's really just about taking what they know and being given a task, figuring out how to complete it on their own," says McPhee.
The majority of the camps are running on the U of A campus with a few held at partners' locations throughout Edmonton. What's more, DiscoverE offers summer programming all over Alberta and in Northwest Territories.
"We use some of the new projects that we come up with for Edmonton, but we also try to tailor them specifically to a community. So if a community has a request, let's say diabetes is a problem in the community, we come up with projects that explore that a little bit deeper," says McPhee.
Last year, Edmonton camps hosted 1,590 campers throughout the summer and reached a 98 per cent fill rate on campus. The camps are currently 94 per cent full. To sign up, visit Faculty of Engineering DiscoverE webpage.