Girl Tech

This summer I have had the chance to do all sorts of different things through my job with the Montgomery and Christian County Extension Offices. I have helped with sewing workshops(I’m currently up to using a sewing machine 3 times in my entire life!), robotics camps (Lego’s and I don’t always get along..), science camps, art camps, and of course fair shows galore. However, one of my favorites was Girl Tech; a one day camp hosted at Lincoln Land Community College in Litchfield and put on by the Montgomery County Extension Office and the University of Illinois – Springfield.

 Girl Tech is a one day camp where girls can come to learn about science and technology in a fun hands-on way. The girls that came ages ranged from 12 to 15, so naturally sticking 25 of them in a room together created tons of fun and excitement and the big room was appropriately named “Chaos Central.”

The "Sushi" Base - Marshmellows and Cake
Decorating Sugar. Yummy!

Upon my arrival at Chaos Central I became the red team leader, and for the remainder of the day I was in control of 6 teenage girls.  While not all of these girls were excited to be there at the beginning of the day ("Mom made me come" was often the reason they were there), as the day wore on they started to enjoy themselves. The first thing we did was called Molecular Gastronomy which involved making “sushi” and carbonated fruit. The ladies in charge of this were super pumped to be there and made everything tons of fun – I think that I learned as much as the girls did! We used marshmallows and cake decorating sugar to start off our sushi, we then made our own “fish eggs” to put on top – this was probably the single coolest thing I have done all summer. If you have ever been to Cherry Berry and had the Bopas, that is basically what we made.

The finished product! First
Sushi I've ever eaten!

Making the "Fish Eggs" - Tons of fun! 

Next we got to take apart some different computers, and learn about what the parts did. Since quite literally repel all technology that comes near me I stepped back and let the girls figure this one out. While getting a little frustrated at times they did a great job figuring out how to take everything apart and even put it back together so that the computer would work! Luckily the instructor was able to put all the technical terms into something we would all understand.

Taking the computers apart...

And Putting them back together!

 

Jenga XXL

Next, it was time to take a break and have some lunch. There wasn't a moment of down time though, as soon as the girls were finished eating we started playing Jenga XXL – its Jenga just like you remember it but bigger and awesome-er. The four teams had a competition to see who could build their tower the tallest, and then set them up to knock them down like dominoes.

 

Chaos Central - Yep! It gets a little crazy. 

Seriously, I need to own this. It’s fantastic.

The afternoon continued with even more cool stuff in store for me and the girls. We learned how to use a graphic design program called Gimp. It was a great program for those of us that are not professional graphic designers and the instructor was great at showing us all the cool features it had. The girls were even able to design their own t-shirts to take home!

In our final session of the day, we learned a little about computer programming using Scratch. The girls had lots of fun playing with the sprites and especially with the sounds that were able to be added to the program. The instructor even taught us how to make our own games!

Using Scratch!

Not to mention the super cool Monster tattoos!

We even learned to make Origami bracelets!

Overall, the day was a success. The girls had tons of fun and if they learned as much as I did they learned a lot too!