Fourth of July in Huntington Beach was one of my most memorable. Since the beach gets rather crowded, we woke up early and spent the entire day in the area (thanks to Elayne’s aunt and uncle!). I’ve never seen fireworks on the beach before, so it was a pretty amazing experience. There were tents and barbecues all over the sand, which did cause me to get lost a few times. Even though it was such a long day, seeing the fireworks show in the end was definitely worth it. We did have quite a few water balloons and firecrackers to avoid on our way back, though!
Since Eureka! camp starts on Monday (7/10), this was our last week to finish planning all of our lesson plans. I spent most of our days finalizing the Breakout Box lesson plan in preparation for CSI week. The Breakout Box was definitely the most work-intensive, since we had to create enough puzzles to last around two hours. At first it took some other DukeEngage students only around 30 minutes to complete, but with the help of one of the Girls, Inc. facilitators, I think we finally have enough to present a fun challenge to the campers when that week comes along!
Starting this Monday, we’re going to be teaching the paper engineering lesson plan for STEM classes and the first Girls, Inc. lesson (which for me is going to be 8th Grade Leadership with Theresa). Caitlyn and I recently finished the zipline lesson plan for the Week 1 STEM classes, and I’m really excited to be facilitating it! It was a bit confusing to gather all of the supplies for the many lessons, but hopefully we have enough materials to last through four days of the lesson. Since we’ll be teaching a bit of elementary mechanical physics and how it applies to ziplines, and then asking the campers to design ziplines themselves and complete challenges, I think it’ll be a lot of fun! Hopefully the campers have as much fun designing the ziplines as we did when preparing the lesson!