The Missouri preteen camp looks like it was a lot of fun! Campers enjoyed activities like riflery, archery, electrical wiring, sewing, Frisbee golf, and even ukulele playing.

In the gallery below the top one, you’ll find two more! Just like in past years, campers enjoyed STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) activities one evening. The second gallery shows the fun: creating a soda geyser, exploring sound with a toposcope, making a homopolar motor, playing with bubbles, building a pop sickle catapult, completing salt-dough circuits, and doing buoyancy experiments.

Then, in the last gallery, you’ll see cardboard boats the dorms created in a contest for their counselors to “sail.” What brave counselors and wise preteen nautical engineers!

Our many thanks to all who helped make this year’s Missouri preteen camp a great success!

STEM Activities

Soda Geyser Campers got to see a geyser: a liquid under pressure that erupts. Each counselor had their own geyser made from soda and mentos.

Tonoscope Sound vibrations and salt can be used to make pictures. Campers made different patterns/ pictures of salt by singing different pitches into the homemade tonoscope.

Homopolar Motor Campers created a motor by using a battery, a magnet, and copper wire.

Bubbles Campers made bubbles using various methods: straws on a table, a giant bubble wand, and a make-your-own pipe cleaner wand.

Popsicle Catapults: Each camper built a popsicle catapult using popsicle sticks, spoons, and rubber bands to see how far they could launch various items.

Salt Dough Circuits Campers created a circuit path using play dough, batteries, and light diodes.

Float your boat: Each camper created their own tinfoil boat to see how much weight it could hold.

Each dorm also constructed a cardboard boat to set their counselor afloat. While some failed, several vessels kept their counselor afloat for the time minimum of five minutes.