Campbell Garvin likes to take things apart at Camp Invention.

The weeklong science camp finished up last week at Rich Pond Elementary School. Campbell, 10, of Bowling Green, will attend Bowling Green Junior High School in August, and said he found gears and wires when he took apart a solar-powered radio at the camp.

“Solar-powered things can be dangerous if you take them apart,” Campbell said. “If you don’t disconnect (the power source) you could get severely injured.”

Ryan Brown, 10, of Bowling Green, who will be in fifth grade at Jody Richards Elementary School, said at a previous year’s Camp Invention, the campers learned how magnets can repel objects when they were attached to cars that went around a small city constructed of recyclable materials.

“You can learn things in a fun and challenging way,” Ryan said.

Organizer Stephanie Paynter said 52 campers ranging in educational level from first to sixth grades attended the camp, which incorporates science, technology, engineering and math education and supplements traditional school-year learning. The camp is sponsored by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

“Our goal is to get students engaged in the STEM disciplines and encourage creativity,” Paynter said. “That’s hard to do in a regular classroom of 25 students. The kids get to create new things.”

One of the activities last week at Camp Invention was constructing an insulated container. The students were told they were in the Sahara desert, where extreme temperatures melt many things and they needed to have the insulated container to protect items that couldn’t be allowed to melt.

Catie Webb taught a lesson about dismantled used appliances and using the parts to build another structure – in this case, a machine that could launch ducks. “It teaches them about velocity, gravity and trajectory,” Webb said.

Jenny DeJarnette gave the kids insight about different elements on earth and physical forces, such as volcanos. “We made navigation tools so we could find the North Star,” she said. As the kids learned, they collected “glyphs,” special symbols found in ancient caves that were painted on the stones.

“We want to get them (the students) to think,” said Lisa Cato, one of the camp’s instructors. She worked with the children on an activity called “Cash Dash.” The student were to put on their thinking caps to look at problems such as productive land scarcity in Singapore and trash endangering marine life along the coast of Honduras. In order to approach the problems, the students learn to use teamwork and think about the larger world outside of Bowling Green, Cato said. 

“They get to be really creative. It gives them a global view of the world with children who have problems,” she said.

“It’s fun,” said Brant Beverly, 9, of Bowling Green. He liked a previous activity at Camp Invention where the kids were trapped on an alien world and were trying to escape.

Brant said the lesson on the Sahara desert taught him that, to survive in the desert, an insulated house is required.

“You get to play and you don’t have any homework,” said Anabeth Webster of Bowling Green, who is going into first grade at Rich Pond Elementary.

Zoe Martin, 9, of Bowling Green, who will be going into the fourth grade at Plano Elementary School, told her parents that she would rather attend Camp Invention than travel to Disney World. Of course, she added, she’s been to Disney World five times. She said a lesson on the stars was important information.

“I learned about how you can use the Big Dipper constellation to find the North Star,” Zoe said. “If you know which way to go north, then you can find south and west.”

— Chuck Mason covers education for the Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/bgdnschools or at bgdailynews.com.