Through our STEM Minute series, WAND has gotten a chance to visit several summer camps in the area.

DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) - It has been a busy summer for Central Illinois students taking part in STEM summer camps. Through our STEM Minute series, WAND has gotten a chance to visit summer camps. Here are some of those camps: 

Heyworth Elementary Summer STEM Camp

Heyworth Elementary held a summer STEM Camp for more than 75 first through sixth graders. Students rotated to different classrooms each day, learning about engineering, STEM in art and outdoor STEM activities. A favorite activity for the kids was learning how to create a Rube Goldberg machine, with one age group focusing on getting candy from a box, onto the table. 

"It wasn't just getting a piece of candy," said Peyton Janvrin, a fifth grader at Heyworth Elementary. "This is like knocking over stuff and then going through screws and then finally knocking over the box to get it." 

Fly Girls Food Chemistry Camp 

Girls from the new Ellsworth Dansby Jr. Magnet School got the chance to learn from Anne Rodriguez from Millikin University. Participants got to learn about pH levels and basic chemistry equations. They also experimented with how natural materials or chemical reactions can change the color of foods. 

"We tried to make a rainbow of the colors with all the acids like vinegar," said Janila White, an eighth grader. "Then we looked at juice and seasoning and added peroxide to see if it would bubble up or not."  

Enos Park Community Garden Kids Garden Club 

Since the end of the school year, kids at the Enos Park Community Garden have ben planting and tending to their designated garden space. They learn about different types of plants, how to help them grow, and how to prepare them. The kids also get the chance to design recipes involving their plants and eat them. This year, they added a station with thermometers and rain gauges so kids could learn how the weather impacts plants. 

"She was telling us how we could like to look at the weather stations at inches of rain, and she has a weather log book as well," said Cole Davis, a participant. "She wanted us to tell what the clouds were that way we could put that in the log book." 

District 186 Camp Invention 

Camp Invention is a national program inspired by the National Inventors Hall of Fame and sponsored by the U.S. Patent Office. Students who finished the school year in grades first through fourth got the chance to learn through a week of new experiments. 

"This camp is like a spark, and it keeps kids really interested in the learning process," said Cindy Crow, Camp Invention Director from District 186. " There have been parents every year who have said to me, 'When my kids got home from camp, they started collecting all these random things in our house to start making a new invention.'" 

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