Kids get hands-on with science and business at Allendale’s summer camp

Allendale Middle School is opening its doors to a week-long adventure where science meets creativity. From August 3rd, kids in kindergarten through sixth grade can join Camp Invention, a program blending fun activities with learning. The camp isn’t just about following instructions—it’s about building, experimenting, and even thinking like a business owner. This year’s theme, Spark, packs four different modules. In Space Morphers, campers don’t just study space—they design rockets and tweak planetary conditions. They’ll grow crystal trees and hatch animal eggs, all while pretending to run a space lab. Meanwhile, Make Waves turns kids into mini-entrepreneurs. They’ll brainstorm products and pitch ideas, all wrapped in a surfing theme to keep things lively. Fur-ensics adds a mystery twist, where children solve cases with the help of robotic capybaras, examining clues like footprints and other traces. The Infringers module pushes kids to solve real-world problems while learning about cryptography and protecting ideas—skills that matter in today’s tech-driven world.Local teachers, familiar with the community, will lead these sessions. The camp isn’t new—it’s been around since 1990 and has reached over 3 million kids. Every year, it teams up with more than 2, 600 schools, giving 140, 000 students a chance to participate. The program also gets support from big names like General Motors and the Overdeck Family Foundation, showing how businesses invest in young minds. Registration is open now. It’s more than a camp—it’s a chance for kids to explore, create, and maybe even discover a passion for science or business.