Camp Quest Arizona 2019 will be the end of June, but preparations have already begun. It’s a very busy week and proper preparations allow me to and the campers to get the most out of the experience. For the last three years, I’ve been building a simple set of shelves to take with me to camp. They consist of ½” PVC pipes and fitting along with repurposed political sign material—coroplast. Pictured are the three sets from the previous years. As you can see, they are full of stuff. My workshop always remains in a state of “organized chaos.” The hoarder quantity of raw materials contained there are sorted and labelled so that I have to spend less time looking for that all important widget that would be perfect for my most recent doo-dad. I’m sorry for all the technical jargon so let me briefly explain…my most recent “doo-dad” might be a Halloween prop or a cleaver way to ignite the fire at the beginning of the annual Winter Solstice celebration. In any case, now that the stuff is all sorted and labelled it doesn’t make sense to undo that. Therefore, I must build another set of shelves for this year’s camp. I’m running out of wall space however. So, what to do? This year I’m going to build a 10 shelf (taller) unit and transfer the containers from one of the shorter units to the bottom of the taller one. I only need 25 or so containers and the taller unit will hold 50. If I do this properly, I’ll pack away the disassembled smaller unit so that it won’t be used and full of junk stuff before next year’s Camp Quest and the cycle will be broken. That’s the plan.

Here is the new 10-shelf framework.

This should hold 50 of the small plastic shoe boxes. The next step was to transfer 25 of the boxes from last year’s set.

Here is the new set with the boxes transferred.

And…here is the newly freed up rack from last year ready for new shelving and a new supply of empty plastic boxes.

This year the campers participating in my STEM elective will be building a vehicle called “The Runner.” As always, I’ll be making modifications to the vehicle and the way it is assembled to fit the age, interest, and experience level of the young campers.

Here is a prototype. The final vehicle will have a “grasshopper” face with LEDs and antennas. The face will allow the campers to select the eye color of their Runner and will give it a bit of a personality. In selecting the eye color, the campers will have to calculate what size of current limiting resister will be necessary. (There is a possibility that some sort of race competition will be involved too.) The goal is to have the campers experience the thrill of being a “maker” as well as being able to use simple mathematics in the process. Perhaps they will take their vehicle home and use the individual parts to make other toys or find other maker activities. I look forward to Camp Quest Arizona every year and this year is no exception.