What is Camp Mathnasium?
Camp Mathnasium is a full-day summer camp that runs for select weeks in July-August, specifically for elementary and middle school students. Each day, students will do at least one S.T.E.A.M. (science, technology, engineering, or art) activity, and at least one math activity (among other things)! The goal is to have fun, and also learn something along the way!
Interview with one of the camp instructors!
1) How did you think the first week or two of summer camp went?
"I think it went pretty well. The students had a lot of positive energy and were very willing to participate in activities. They were really into the various activities and had a lot of fun." - Anonymous Instructor 1
"There was a lot of excitement in the first week, the kids were meeting each other for the first time and a lot of the activities seemed fresh and new to them!" - Kaitlyn
2) What were some of your/the students' favourite moments?
"I offered the students a choice in what activity to do, and one student was very interested in building a bridge. Once I started explaining how the triangle was the strongest shape used in construction, and demonstrating how to build triangles out of materials, he got really into it and built a huge bridge he was proud of! We tested it after, the student was excited to show every instructor that walked past and his parents. We could stack a lot of stuff on top of the bridge, and it held well." - Anonymous Instructor 1
"I really liked building pom-pom launchers with them, and doing activities that were super hands on. We did a lot of crafts, even going into origami and mathematical art." - Kaitlyn
3) What was the most interesting thing they learned?
"Learning the basics of coding. They learned how code needed to be built using very small, specific steps in order to achieve the bigger goal and to make their robot (aka. an instructor acting like a robot) complete various tasks." - Anonymous Instructor 1
"I taught a lesson on basic psychology and they seemed to learn a lot for that. I was also there for the S.T.E.A.M. day involving procedural generation (a technique found in game design), and that also was a lot of fun." - Kaitlyn
4) What were some takeaways you had?
"We introduced a lot of different activities, teaching them about new concepts, but if they really enjoyed a specific activity, we could go more in depth with it another day, focusing on teaching them something new about it." - Anonymous Instructor 1
"I learned about the power of increasing student engagement with various activities, such as hands-on activities versus movement activities versus writing activities. The students stayed interested throughout the day and I learned a lot about the students as they learned a lot about the material." - Kaitlyn
Thank you to all students who came to our first summer camp and made it a success!
(604) 825-4528
