By The FFL Buzz Team

Fayetteville Free Library

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) programs and offerings are as important as ever. With three camps making up our “Family of STEAM” summer camp program, the FFL now has Geek Guy, Geek Girl and STEAM Camp. This grouping of camps provides youth from grades third through eighth an opportunity to engage in fun STEM activities, meet men and women in STEM careers as well as visit some great local STEM resources like Cornell and the MOST.

Each of the Geek camps follow a similar format and schedule of activities. This year the staff at the FFL built in multiple coding activities for each day of the camp, whether it is syntactic or block type.

Campers especially enjoyed coding with Sphero robots to carry out certain challenges on their own. Utilizing the many sensors on the Sphero, campers get to use an array of data to help modify their code and get it just right.

Other coding activities included unplugged coding and Hopscotch, an app-making program where kids coded their own app.

Campers had a special treat this year with visits from members of Cornell’s Spacecraft Planetary Imaging Facility (SPIF). Staff from SPIF visited both camps to speak to the campers as well as facilitate activities. Campers learned about what makes up comets and were able to make their own comets with dry ice and some household ingredients.

Cornell also brought with them a Magic Planet, a digital projection globe about three feet in diameter. With it, campers were able to see actual satellite imagery of all the planets in our solar system as well as some interesting moons like Titan and Pan which orbit around Saturn.

For more information, visit the Fayetteville Free Library in person at 300 Orchard Street or online at FFLIB.org.

The FFL Buzz will be back next week!