WESTFIELD-For the past month, young people at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Westfield have been intellectually challenged in a multitude of ways during summer camp – including at the new STEM Lab.
Summer camp counselor Adrian Colombani explains how to build a catapult to Alexia Moore, Taj Bressem and Riley Grant.
“With so much focus today on science, technology, engineering and math, we wanted to implement a new area in our camp program so we created a STEM Lab which is brand new to our program this year,” said Kellie Brown, director of operations.
The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Lab debuted at the club on June 25, the first day of summer camp.
“The lab is part of the 40-minute rotations of areas that the campers do throughout the course of a day, involving all 220 campers per week,” said Brown.
Brown explained that the rotation schedule allows campers to do “fun creative activities” at the STEM Lab.
“We have individual stations that the campers can choose to utilize,” said Brown, noting that the “Math Mango Corner” allows young people to work on math problems from the Math Mango curriculum.
Summer camp counselor Jalinda Luciano explains how to use a catapult to Marin Monyahan, Xavier Cardenales and Gabriela Seda.
“This is a self-paced program which allows campers to progress at their leisure,” said Brown.
Campers also have access to Kinects, Quibits, Legos and additional creative puzzles that take concentration and patience to accomplish.
“We have the robotics program which allows campers to create various figures that become mobile with the help of a computer,” said Brown, adding, “The campers must build and program the objects to move.”
On a recent weekday morning, campers were learning how to build a catapult as a team with the assistance from summer camp counselors Adrian Colombani and Jalinda Luciano. Once the catapult was built it was time to test their efforts and soon the campers were enthralled with the results.
Audriana Lachtara, 10, has been attending the Boys and Girls Club for four years and finds the weekly challenges in particular “very cool.”
While math is Lachtara’s favorite subject in school, working together as a team on special STEM Lab projects is also “fun.”
“I like to build things,” said Lachtara. “We all think it’s fun and we get to make new friends here.”
Tyler Crepeau, 10, who also says math is his favorite subject in school, echoed those sentiments.
“I’m a team player,” said Crepeau, adding “I like to build stuff and make creations so the STEM Lab is pretty interesting.”
Both Lachtara and Crepeau agree that the “best part” of the STEM Lab is learning different projects each week.
“We have a variety of books that have many different forms of science projects that the campers can do,” said Brown. “One of the most popular has been the ‘Duct Tape Engineering.’ Campers use every day duct tape to create various things such as pocketbooks, purses, wallets, flowers and other items.”
Brown added that the weekly challenges are conducted as a group and have created zip lines, catapults and marble runs.
“We feel so strongly that the STEM program can help the creative minds of our youth today that we have decided this program will continue through the school year as part of the Education Room programming,” said Brown. “It is our hope that we can open the minds of the youth to look at future careers in the STEM field.”
