VSU Welcomes Future Innovators to Campus June 12-16

VALDOSTA — Valdosta State University has partnered with the National Inventors Hall of Fame to present Camp Invention: Launch June 12-16. Creative and innovative dreamers in the elementary grades are invited to attend this fun, educational event.

Hosted by VSU’s Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science, Camp Invention is the only nationally recognized nonprofit elementary enrichment program inspired by the brightest thinkers around — the National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees. All activities are designed to be fun, hands-on, challenging, and age-appropriate, with a focus on encouraging problem-solving, teamwork, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Camp Invention: Launch attendees will experience invention with a twist in Duct Tape Billionaire, while also exploring patents, how to launch a business, and how to present their products to mock investors. They will apply principles of engineering to create a castle from cardboard and design a pulley system to raise a castle flag, build an air cannon that demonstrates how air moves in response to force, and explore aerodynamics to blast water rockets made from plastic bottles more than 50 feet into the air during Have a Blast.  

During Operation Keep Out, Camp Invention: Launch attendees will create the ultimate spy gadget alarm box to keep treasures secure. They will locate and prepare a new planet for human habitation during Mission Space Makers, allowing them an opportunity to combine their interests in science and space to design inventions that transform the atmosphere, terrain, and ecosystem of an exoplanet.  

This is VSU’s sixth year presenting Camp Invention to the Valdosta-Lowndes County community. Activities will be held from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Nevins Hall. Registration is $225 per child and includes all supplies and a T-shirt.

Camp Invention: Launch is appropriate for children entering kindergarten and first through sixth grades during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Please contact Dr. Denise Taunton Reid, a professor in the Department of Mathematics at VSU, at (229) 333-5784 or dtreid@valdosta.edu to learn more. Discounts are available to children of VSU faculty, staff, and students and to sibling groups attending camp together.