Digging those science camp lessons

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT BEACH - Taking the utmost care, 5-year-old Ian Givant slowly

raised the miniature chiseling tools and began breaking apart a thick

block of sand in search of a fossil.

His fellow campers looked on eagerly, as there were only two sets of

these special tools.

What would he find? The remnants of an ancient civilization? A

Tyrannosaurus rex or maybe human remains?

On and on Ian carefully chiseled until he found something that didn’t

seem to belong on the playground where the excavation site was located.

Bit by bit his find was exposed.

“I found a spaceman,” he shouted in excitement, holding up a two-inch

plastic purple space alien with a green oval glow-in-the-dark eyes.

OK, so the paleontology excavation was a setup. But the young campers

in the Super Sonic Science day camp, run by the city of Newport Beach,

were learning and having fun it seemed. The camp is broken into groups by

age. The paleontologists on the playground dig were children entering

kindergarten through third grade.

Once the children realized that the blocks they were holding would

most likely each contain a similar toy and not a delicate animal bone,

they began to smash them open on any available surface.

Some children beat theirs against the sidewalk. Others bashed theirs

with the hammer, lending the chisels to other campers. Madeline Reo, 7,

repeatedly beat hers against the bright blue pole of the playground

equipment until a tool was free for her to use.

“Now, if these were delicate bones we wouldn’t hit them so hard,”

their camp counselor Karen Lejman reminded them, wincing as she watched

one boy stomp on his.

After all the space aliens had been freed from their fossilized state,

the campers trouped back to the classroom.

While one might look at the excavation fiasco and think the campers

didn’t understand the process, a question-and-answer session back in the

room proved they certainly did.

This was the first of a number of projects in which campers will

partake this week that will emphasize as well as some pretty advanced

scientific theories.

The main projects of the weeklong science camp are to build a robot

and a rocket. During these projects, children will learn about kinetic

and potential energy, Lejman said, as well as talk about momentum, speed

and Newton’s Laws.

FYI:

Who: Future scientists

What: Learn about paleontology, and to make robots, rockets and

microscopes.

Where: West Newport Beach Center