What an incredible summer! I visited every one of our 26 camps, and everywhere I looked I was reminded of our central purpose: empowering kids to engage in creative action. Before camp began, I issued a challenge to our staff to inspire at least one child every day to turn his or her idea into a creative design or solution. The results were amazing.
At Camp Galileo, I watched campers craft their own coral reefs, construct multi-layer Egyptian temples and finally succeed in getting their custom-crafted airplane models to fly. At Galileo Summer Quest, I witnessed go-kart parades, innovative red-carpet fashion shows and fantastic culinary experiments in our new Kitchen Chemistry Minor. Everywhere I looked, campers were engaged in creative action, transforming their ideas into things the world has never seen before. I hope that your campers were as excited by what they created at camp as I was watching them create it.
We’re already looking forward to next summer, when Galileo Summer Quest campers will have new Majors and Minors to choose from and Camp Galileo campers will explore four new curriculum themes, encountering an eccentric designer in need of some playful assistance, a creative caper in need of a solution, one city that needs designing from the ground up and another full of forbidden secrets.
Hip, hip hooray for our contest winners! David Brubeck of Pleasanton was the randomly selected winner of our Summer Snapshot Contest with a photo of his son posing with his Egyptian Art projects. We hope you enjoy your iPad, David!
In addition to our other contests, we randomly selected winners from families who helped give us feedback about their camp experience this summer by completing our weekly parent survey. The three lucky families who won free camp in 2011 were:
Galileo Summer Quest Survey Winner: Charles Hultgren, Galileo Summer Quest San Mateo
The Tech Summer Camps Survey Winner: Sandra Chen, The Tech Camps, San Jose
Each week we challenged parents with a trivia question to be answered on our Facebook page. The randomly chosen winners of our Parent Puzzler Contest scored a week of free camp in 2011. The winners were:
Week 1 Winner : Jonathan Leblang, Woodside/Palo Alto
Our smallest campers, the Nebulas, make their own tiny sea creatures. From concept to finished projects, here are the Nebulas of Camp Galileo, San Rafael, at work:
My Experience at Camp Galileo, By Kailey Sjauwfoekloy
It was my first time at Camp Galileo, and I had a great time. I had fun learning about science and art. My favorite projects in science is when I built the Roller Coasters and when I worked with a partner and made symbiotic relationship sea animals with someone named Jacqueline and made a seacat and mini-whale. Angelo was nice to give us tips for the roller coasters so it would work better. In art, my favorite project was when I made the mummy cases and worry doll. Katie was really nice and helped me with the sewing part in the worry doll. In Outdoors, I had loads of fun playing outdoor games. I also did Klutz activities like clay, body crayons, Cootie Catchers, and lots of other activities. Keaton was my group leader and was nice to let people hold our team sign. We had lots of fun decorating our team flag and playing around. In extended care, I even had fun with lots of counselors. Like Isabel, one of the counselors, made a pink clay rose for me and I made a stem. It was really pretty! Mike, one of the camp directors, was really friendly.
I had loads of fun hanging out with my friends and even on my first day, I felt comfortable. I made lots of friends and I could tell by my friends’ faces that they were having lots of fun, too. We had trouble in science figuring out what to do, but we worked it out. Every time my parents picked my up, I told them about what I did and had lots of fun. Your website really says the truth. Everyone I knew there had tons of fun doing art, science, and outdoors. We had no problems and I always wondered what kind of fun I would have tomorrow.
You really have awesome activities and I enjoyed Camp Galileo a lot. So did everybody else I knew there. Who couldn’t like Camp G? It’s awesome! This camp is one of the best camps I’ve been to!! Thank you for having this camp! I really enjoyed it! I’ll come back soon!!
Camp Galileo is a really great summer camp and it’s really fun. I like the science teachers. I like making a tie-dye shirt. I liked doing Mad Libs, it’s really fun. Camp Galileo has a magic chicken. No other camp has that. I like him. I like getting to dress up as a mummy and I like Jalloween.
Science is fun because you get to take the science projects home, and they’re really cool, and some of them, like the plane thing, could actually fly. Well, the rocket balloon makes the plane fly. You pretty much sketch out what you want to do and decide which would work best before you build it. If you have a partner and you don’t agree, you try to put both ideas into it.
We were doing a water rocket launch and a few Stars were looking at it, then they told the other Stars and they all came out to watch us do it. Their teacher was all right with it, so they took a break to go out and watch. It was fun to have the other kids watch us.
On one of the projects, Science Teacher Marie did a practice launch and it didn’t go anywhere, then we changed a few things and it worked. The problem was there was too much water in it, and it was baking soda, vinegar and water and too much water made the reaction not work that well.
Instead of spending the summer sitting around playing video games, the Galileo Summer Quest Video Game Design Majors learn to create games. Okay, so they get to play the games too, but it takes nearly two weeks to get the games completed.
No two games are the same. Not only do the students learn about design and software, they get a lesson in the video game rating system. They’re reminded to think about the levels of violence they use in their game and what type of rating their game would elicit.
When I visited GSQ Saratoga, the Video Game Design Majors were playing around with sound, adding music and sound effects, in preparation for Parent Presentations. By the next day, the room would be transformed into an arcade, allowing parents to try out the different games (no quarters or tokens required!). The amount of collaboration between the students was impressive. While each game was unique, any time a snag was hit, another student would make a suggestion or help fix the problem. Everyone was hard at work and fingers were working the keyboards at a fast pace, as the students flipped back and forth between the visual part of their game, and the screen with the code behind it, making adjustments, then checking the results.
Here’s a look at a few of the games as they neared completion:
What an incredible summer! I visited every one of our 26 camps, and everywhere I looked I was reminded of our central purpose: empowering kids to engage in creative action. Before camp began, I issued a challenge to our staff to inspire at least one child every day to turn his or her idea into a creative design or solution. The results were amazing.
Back to Galileo Website
