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Article for: The Davis Enterprise
Date: August 15, 2003
Author: Pamela Emery and Tom Wickersham
Contact: Tom Wickersham


A SUMMER FULL OF SCIENCE

What happens when you have to turn away almost as many students as you can accept? You find more classroom space for the next go around.

Demand for Explorit's Summer Science Classes continues to grow each year, and this summer, Explorit found some creative solutions to their limited classroom space.

First, they converted their garage into a classroom. Then, with the financial support of PG&E, they were able to secure class space at Birch Lane Elementary, a nearby school.

The result? Almost 550 children, a 39% increase from last year, were able to make an edible Earth models, create a crystal garden, design an egg bungee jump, launch chemical rockets and more.

Other highlights of the science camp include evening programs, cool dinosaur T-shirts, and special all-girls classes that allowed girls to wriggle with worms, investigate pond water, and become engineers in a confidence-building environment.

"It was a great success," said Explorit educator Innisfree Seyman of the program expansion at Birch Lane. "The large spacious rooms and a great playground really was an added plus," she noted.

All summer long, the full-day program offered a more formal educational setting in the morning and a relaxed investigative and exploratory approach in the afternoons. Once a week, students participated in activities facilitated by Mackenzie Tysell, Health in Your World project coordinator. "These could become part of the Health in Your World Club, a program which may be offered to youth prior to or after the formal Health in Your World Program is presented at their school," Tysell said.

Kudos go to all the teens and adults who volunteered at Explorit. Their assistance was extremely valuable and Explorit is lucky to have such dedicated people who spend some (or all!) of their summer at Explorit.

The 2003 Summer Science Class volunteers are Abbie Arons, Aanu Akintomide, Selina Barraza, Ben Bradshaw, Laura Bradley, Sarah Brown, Maya Caldwell, Valerie Carrasco, Amelia Cheikh, Steven Chen, Joe Garrity, Phil Garrity, Mimi Geberamaian, Valerie Gerriets, Alli Gerriets, Lynn Hsieh, Zi-Wei Hu, Jill Jaffe, Jessie Kennedy, Jeovanna Lemas, Ana Martinez, Walter Moulton, Natalie Ocampo, Michelle Padilla, Bettina Marie Patena, Margarita Rodriguez, Sabrina Virk, Laurel Visher and Charles Wilkerson.

Special thanks, too, to PG&E for their underwriting of the 2003 Summer Science Classes.

Wonder what next summer will bring? More explorations with Explorit, of course!

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Explorit Science Center is at 3141 5th Street in East Davis. The current exhibition is "Count on It: Numbers in Nature," which continues through Sept. 27. Public hours are Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Sunday from 1 to 4:30 p.m., and Tuesday through Friday from 2 to 4:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.explorit.org or call Explorit at (530) 756-0191.