Hillandale Adds New STEM Summer Camps

Inside Hillandale Elementary, students in Catch the Beat summer camp recently practiced songs on their xylophones for an upcoming parent showcase, while their classmates in the Science of Superheroes camp talked about Batman and learned about echolocation.

Outside, rising 4th- and 5th-graders were testing how tire air pressure affects speed on the BMX bikes they built during the week-long BMX Camp.

Last year, the new BMX bike camp focusing on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills was so popular with Hillandale students and parents that the school added programming for its younger students this summer.

Taught by music teacher Christine Georger, the Catch the Beat camp focused on percussion and rhythm work, and allowed the students to get creative.

“We made homemade percussion instruments from found things at home,” Georger said, as students improvised a song using upside-down buckets, shakers of beans in Pringles cans, and tambourines made from two paper plates stapled together.

When students weren’t working on their xylophone songs they’d been practicing for a special parent performance Thursday, they sat on the floor in a circle and worked together to play songs with Boomwhackers – colored tubes of varied lengths that created different pitches when tapped.

In Cortney McCall’s classroom, students transformed discussions about Batman into comparisons of human and bat skeletons as part of the Science of Superheroes camp.

On Tuesday, she had students slowly walk around their desks with their eyes closed, during a demonstration on echolocation.

“Some of you decided to keep your hands by your side, and some of you put your hands out to feel,” McCall noted, before having the students repeat the experiment, but this time having them saying their names out loud as they moved.

Students reflected on the experiment and said listening for the noise of others talking nearby made it easier for them to move around the room without running into anything. McCall explained that bats use echolocation in a similar fashion, sending out signals that echo off of objects and prey, and had students place their hands on their larynxes to feel the different vibrations as they said “ah,” “ee,” and “oh” sounds.

“Those vibrations are very similar to the echolocation that bats use,” she said.

Outside, students in the BMX Camp were busy inflating and deflating their bicycle tires to different levels to test how air pressure affected their speed.

Emily G., a 5th grader, said, “We had underinflated and overinflated groups,” who made timed trips from one point in the parking lot to the other, before making the trip again on tires inflated to the recommended 40 psi.

“Tomorrow we’re calculating average speed,” said 5th grade teacher Tara Hammond. “On Thursday, they’re going to design their own experiments using the bikes.”

The BMX bikes – as well as the musical instruments in Georger’s class and other materials used by the camps – were funded by grants from the Biogen Foundation, the Can’d Aid Foundation, and the Rotary Club, and are Hillandale’s to keep and use throughout the school year.

Free to Hillandale students, the camps are an excellent way to extend the learning process through the summer and make STEM lessons fun, Principal Jenny Moreno said.

Moreno said, “We wanted to do something that would spark kids interest and make them feel positive about coming to school as we get ready for the fall.”

(Written by Molly McGowan Gorsuch, HCPS Public Information Officer.)