2013 Themes
4 Fresh Themes
to incite innovation
Every year, we introduce rich, riveting new themes to inspire budding innovators. Each theme combines art, science and outdoor activities around a whimsical week-long narrative that’s crafted to keep kids giggling and engaged. This year we feature four fresh themes, each adapted for three different age groups. Our themes are created together with our fabulous curriculum partners at Klutz, The de Young Museum, The Tech Museum of Innovation and The Chabot Space & Science Center.
Medieval Adventure
Art and Inventions of Camelot
Hear ye, hear ye! Adventure awaits – in a land of castles, catapults and quests. Come unlock the secrets of medieval artisans and craftsmen. Create golden chalices, printed surcoats and a throne room fit for kings and queens. Engineer projectile-propelling inventions worthy of the noblest knights.
Nebulas
Pre-K to K
Art: Fill your castle with characters fiery and fun. Use paper, paint and oil pastels to create wild, wiggly dragon puppets. Practice repeating patterns as you construct a jingling jester’s hat and bauble.
Science: Discover how to make sturdy structures as you design and strength-test a giant castle wall. Use what you learn to build a castle fit for a Nebula, complete with reinforced drawbridge and working flagpole.
Outdoor: Journey beyond the castle walls to navigate a horse-and-knight obstacle course. Tackle a medieval scavenger hunt, completing team challenges and collecting clues to unearth a royal treasure.
Stars
1st and 2nd grades
Art: Outfit your court in royal style. Design a majestic fabric surcoat hand-stamped with your personal coat of arms. Learn about symmetry and cardboard construction as you craft a finely filigreed imperial chalice.
Science: Apply the principles of potential and kinetic energy to mount a mighty castle defense featuring high-flying, fast-firing catapults. Construct an impenetrable castle with sturdy doors and drawbridges, built to withstand a powerful battering ram.
Outdoor: Take to the courtyard for a Galileo-style jousting match. Use pool-noodle swords with balloon tips, then collaborate with your team to jump the castle moat without falling in.
Supernovas
3rd to 5th grades
Art: Become king or queen of the castle. Construct elaborate embossed thrones that exhibit balance and symmetry. Experiment with color mixing, then design and cut a cellophane stained glass window triptych to illuminate your throne.
Science: Learn the physics behind far-flinging trebuchets, the mightiest of medieval weapons. Practice with staff slings and throwing arms. Then build your own gravity-powered trebuchets, testing and modifying for accuracy and range.
Outdoor: Get moving with a medieval-inspired game of tag called Giants, Wizards and Elves. Work with your Supernova team to catch balls launched by a by large-scale camp trebuchet.
African Safari
Art and Animals of the Serengeti
Embark on an epic safari adventure. Set off across the Savannah on the lookout for elusive animals. Investigate biomechanics and get under the skin of the continent’s wildest creatures. Find out how to move as quietly as a hippo, or how giraffes support their long necks. Create artwork inspired by Maasai beadwork, traditional batiks and your spectacular surroundings.
Nebulas
Pre-K to K
Art: Unmask Africa’s artistic traditions. Learn about texture, pattern and stamping techniques to create your own painted Zulu mask. Practice weaving, tracing and cutting as you craft a snappy woven-paper crocodile.
Science: Take your safari adventure to new heights. Use your knowledge of elastic potential energy to engineer a jumping frog. Learn the fundamentals of friction, then construct and test your own quick-climbing monkey.
Outdoor: Go stepping and slithering through the Savannah. Play an animal-themed adaptation of Follow the Leader and a Zambian game called Banyoka that tasks you with solving team challenges as an interconnected snake.
Stars
1st and 2nd grades
Art: Bring the African Savannah to life with a shadow box that features an animal in its environment. Show off your skills for layering tints, textures and shapes. Practice resist techniques to create a masterful batik wall hanging.
Science: Heed the call of the wild as you learn about sound, vibration and animal survival. Design devices that make distinct animal calls, analyze African arthropods and build your own insect with jointed appendages and defendable body.
Outdoor: Take to the great African outdoors. Play a traditional South African tag game called Mamba and an African-dance-themed round of Simon Says.
Supernovas
3rd to 5th grades
Art: Design a distinctive African dwelling. Sculpt your own clay Ndebele house and paint it with bright geometric designs. Learn about perspective, scale and negative space as you create a watercolor and chalk-pastel landscape silhouette to set off your structure.
Science: Go beyond skin deep to investigate muscles, body structure and stability. Then engineer an articulated African animal with moving appendages. Make some noise as you build and test an African-inspired horn that can sound two different notes.
Outdoor: Take the sunny Savannah by storm with Supernova team challenges and traditional African fun. Play the rhythm game Chigora Danda and Mbube, Mbube, a lion-and-impala chase game.
Galileo Amusement Park
Art and Science of Circuses, Rides and Carnivals
Step right up to the main event – a colorful carnival of your own design. Create spinning acrobats, circus wagons and arcade games. Attempt astonishing feats of engineering as you build a mini-speedway or your own roller coaster. Construct the most exhilarating expo the world has ever seen.
Nebulas
Pre-K to K
Art: Show off your carnival’s true colors. Experiment with warm and cool tones to create a vibrantly painted carnival mask. Practice sculpting techniques with colorful clay to make whirly-pop lollipops for the concession stand.
Science: Fly through the air—and around the track—with the greatest of ease. Use your knowledge of levers to make airborne acrobats who know how to stick a landing. Lay down a track and get ready to race marbles on a mini-speedway.
Outdoor: Gather under the big top to play parachute games and get your wiggles out as you follow the leader through a twisting, turning, riding, sliding series of imaginary carnival rides.
Stars
1st and 2nd grades
Art: Get rolling as you construct and decorate a dazzling hand-painted circus wagon with 3D details. Learn the basics of graphic design to craft stylized text and bold images to deck out the skee-ball game you build in Science.
Science: Engineer your carnival’s contraptions and coasters. Use your knowledge of ramps, inertia and projectile motion to make and play your own skee-ball machine. Build a rousing roller coaster complete with loops, tunnels and jumps.
Outdoors: Score a backstage pass to the greatest show on earth. Employ movement and balance skills to take on acrobatically-inspired team challenges with your fellow Stars.
Supernovas
3rd to 5th grades
Art: Join Cirque du Galileo. Learn the art of mixing tints to make masks inspired by the elements. Use professional sculpting wire and tools to create performers and props for an Alexander-Calder-inspired wire circus scene.
Science: Design your own dizzying, hair-raising rides. Learn about centripetal force and torque to engineer a one-of-a-kind spinning attraction. Then use your electrical know-how to make basic series and parallel circuits to illuminate your rotating ride.
Outdoors: Step into three rings of fun as you practice the circus arts of plate spinning and theatrical face painting. Collaborate with your team during all-camp games.
Space Odyssey
Cosmic Art and Rocket Science
It’s one giant leap for camper-kind on a mission co-created by Chabot Space & Science Center. Blast off with our favorite stargazer, Galileo Galilei. Make cosmically inspired masterpieces. And build high-flying, gravity-defying rockets, as you explore the final frontier.
Nebulas
Pre-K to K
Art: See the universe through a moon-dweller’s eyes. Use different mediums, textures and blending techniques to create a heavenly lunar landscape. Practice careful cutting and folding as you craft an extra-symmetrical extraterrestrial.
Science: Suit up for space. Build collision-proof helmets to protect you from debris and reflective arm mirrors to expand your view. Blast off high-flying straw spaceships and straight-shooting rubber band rockets designed for a safe voyage home.
Outdoors: Keep your outdoor odyssey grounded. Transmit mission-critical directions between space center and astronauts in the team-building game Mission Control. Find your land legs and decompress during Klutz time.
Stars
1st and 2nd grades
Art: Use the cosmos as your canvas. Learn the basics of composition and line, then use glitter scratchboard to design a sparkling space scene. Practice additive and subtractive techniques to create a fantastical UFO shadow puppet.
Science: Prepare for takeoff as you discover the secrets behind making spaceships soar. Learn about aerodynamics and thrust, test alternate designs, then build stomp rockets with strong, steady trajectories and safe landing systems.
Outdoors: Launch outdoor fun into the stratosphere. Play collaborative space games alongside your fellow Stars and a rousing round of Extreme Galaxy Hopscotch that features asteroids, spaceships and black holes.
Supernovas
3rd to 5th grades
Art: Explore the galaxy’s outer artistic limits. Experiment with painting techniques to make your own deep-space masterpiece. Create a character, sketch your design, then stitch a wonderfully wacky, one-of-a-kind stuffed alien.
Science: Get airborne with a compressed-air rocket built to fly faster than a race car and soar hundreds of feet high. Construct high-velocity vehicles and engineer reentry systems to make your robust rocket reusable.
Outdoors: Participate in intergalactic innovation challenges and a team-building meteorite mission.