2017_06_08_CIE_science_campus

Kimikarin -a platform to bring science closer to children and young people- and the School of Sciences of the University of Navarra have designed a summer camp for children from 10 to 14 years old, to be held at campus in Pamplona. This initiative proposes the learning of basic science concepts in a fun way and introducing some workshops in English that also improve competences in this field language.

This first edition of the Science Camp Little Einsteins will last four days and will be held in two batches during the last two weeks of June, from 20 to 23 and 27 to 30, at schedule from 9 am to 1 pm. The workshops, dynamics, team games and experiments will take place at the Sciences Building of the University of Navarra, where the teacher of Chemistry Cristina Sola -together with two students of Degree of Chemistry, María Osés and Mikel Granado- will teach the kids some basic principles of science structured in 4 themes: water, air, earth and science at home.

work In addition, students will go on a weekly field trip related to the theme of the camp and will work on other valuable personal skills such as teamwork, the power of imagination and how to use their creative abilities while assimilating and internalizing basic science concepts through hands-on, active, game-based learning.

Learning by doing

María Irurozki and Ainhoa Pipaón, coordinators of Kimikarin, consider this camp as a perfect option to demonstrate that science and fun are not at odds: "Kimikarin is a program educational that we launched at the same time we started the Degree in Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, at the University of Mondragon. There we learned about Learning by doing: a learning method that we find especially useful to change the stereotypes of the traditional Education regarding the teaching of science", they both explain.

So far Kimikarin has organized programs in municipalities such as Tolosa, Cizur, Ordizia or Pamplona, and has developed long-term workshops in countries such as China and the USA. In the case of the Science Camp Little Einsteins, its coordinators consider that it has the added bonus of the scientific-technical training of its monitors: "In the end, the goal is that the child, through the internship, is able to solve the problems that are presented through the development of hypotheses, their application, the evaluation of the results and the comparison with other ideas or theories", they conclude.