Week Three’s theme was

Spark! Electricity & Magnets

On Monday, the whole group got to enjoy some time outside with the Minnesota United Soccer Clinic. They got free t-shirts and sunglasses, and got to play soccer with the Minnesota United team aka the Loons. They even got to meet their mascot, PK the loon!

Students playing soccer with Minnesota United

The Middle Schoolers had another lesson from Steve Birth about electricity and inventing. The group started building their own cardboard boomboxes, which will be manually powered by generators.

Both the Elementary group and the middle schoolers were visited by Create MPLS, who showed them how to do Lego robotics. They followed instructions to build Lego cars, and then learned how to code their movements with tablets. The students had fun playing with different speeds, lights, and sounds for their Lego cars!

Lego robotics with Create MPLS

Both groups also spent some time with Creative Kuponya, who talked to them about managing stress and helped them make their own worry stones out of clay. Every person’s worry stone was unique to them, with different combinations of colors and shapes.

Crafting worry stones with Creative Kuponya

On Friday, we took a field trip to the Minnesota Science Museum. Before lunch, we went outside to play Night at the Museum with the museum staff. Then, the middle schoolers learned about hydroponic planting and even got to take home their own plant, while the elementary schoolers combined different crayons and melted them in molds to make their own crayons.

Middle schoolers doing a hydroponic planting project

Elementary schoolers making their own crayons

After lunch, we explored the museum exhibits. Students had a lot of fun in the interactive Experiment Gallery and loved looking at the Exquisite Creatures exhibit, which featured art made of different preserved animal specimens. We got to see the Stellar Tours Live Digital Telescope Show in the museum’s Omnitheater, where we got a closer look at the planets in our solar system.

Students at the Minnesota Science Museum

Stay tuned to see what we did during Week 4 of camp! Follow us on Instagram and Facebook to see more photos from Genius Labs.