YP-1070 - 2025 Kids on Campus
Course Description
Kids on Campus offerings for summer 2025 are available below.
GoSTEM Optics 2025
July 21 – 25 | Director: Susan Silk | Instructors: Sarah McGregor & Susan Romano
Join us for GoSTEM Optics 2025, a welcoming, hands-on experience designed to ignite curiosity and introduce students from all backgrounds to the fascinating world of optics. Whether you're already drawn to science or just beginning to notice how light plays a role in your everyday life, this week is all about discovery, creativity, and connection. Throughout the program, students will explore the science of light—how it moves, bends, reflects, and interacts with the world around us. Through engaging experiments and activities, participants will uncover the secrets behind mirrors and lenses, rainbows and glints of color, polarized sunglasses, fiber optics, and more. Together, we’ll investigate key concepts such as reflection, refraction, diffraction, polarization, thin films, and total internal reflection, and see how each one helps us understand and shape the world.
Optics is everywhere—from the way we see, to the technology in our phones and cameras, to advances in medicine, communications, and clean energy. Students will not only learn about these real-world applications, but also engineer take-home projects like [mini periscopes, simple microscopes, or rainbow viewers] that bring optical ideas to life. At the end of the week, students will present their own custom-designed optics project at a public Exhibition Showcase, highlighting the topic or discovery that inspired them most. It’s a chance to celebrate curiosity, creativity, and the power of light. Opportunities in optics are expanding rapidly, and GoSTEM Optics 2025 is your invitation to explore how light shapes everything—from nature to technology—and how you can be part of its future.
Who can attend? Girls and Boys entering grade 7-9.
Where: KSC Physics Lab, Science Building.
Questions? Please contact Susan Silk: susansilk53@gmail.com
History Detective Camp
The Robbery of the Savings Bank of Walpole
Session I: July 7-11
Session II: August 4-8
Both sessions run the same program, children should only sign up for one session.
Seeking junior history detectives who love a good mystery! Detectives will be trained in the techniques used by professionals to solve mysteries at museums. They will then use their skills to assist chief detectives with their investigation into a mysterious case from 1864 when the infamous gentleman thief, Max Shinburn, robbed the Savings Bank of Walpole. Adding to the fun will be plenty of walking field trips to explore the Wyman Tavern, the Historical Society of Cheshire County, and Savings Bank of Walpole.
Camp Purpose and Objectives
Explored in this course are concepts for linking museums and primary source analysis to student learning about the past. Participants will gain access to tools and techniques used by museums to discover more about local history. Each day, students will learn strategies for discovering clues from the past by: analyzing historic artifacts, documents, artwork, and photographs; creating and following maps; interviewing ‘witnesses’ of history; researching answers to questions; and thinking critically about the history of one’s community.
At the center of this course will be a real bank robbery: The Robbery of the Savings Bank of Walpole is based on the real bank robbery that occurred in 1864, an event that bankrupted the bank for many years. Junior detectives will be asked to follow Max Shinburn’s case to locate his missing safe cracking tools. Throughout the week, students will use their new-found skills to follow leads and solve the case. They will build their own ‘case files’ of information to take home at the end of the week.
Camp Format
Morning sessions will act as detective-in-training workshops. These will consist of reading, conducting experiments, making observations, building, and working on group projects. Afternoon detective work will have campers solve the Robbery of Savings Bank of Walpole. Sessions involve analysis of historical resources, group work, visits to the Historical Society and Saving Bank of Walpole, as well as walking tours around KSC campus and downtown.
What to Bring
Campers are asked to bring comfortable shoes, a water bottle, lunch and snack.
Who can attend: grades 3-5
Questions? Please contact: lifelonglearning@keene.edu
