This summer, my sister and I went to a camp called SIG. That stands for “Summer Institute for the Gifted”. We went there for three weeks and had a lot of fun and we learnt a lot there too! Some kids stayed there for the whole day and had 4 periods. We were half day students, meaning we had only 2 periods rather than 4.
My first period was called “Spying: Secrets, Science, and Surveillance”. This class was really exciting. We learned about real life spies, such as Kate Warne and Ian Fleming. (Yes, Ian Fleming was a spy before he became an author.) I also learned a lot of different codes and ciphers. Can you decipher this code? Wklv fdps lv rq pb Frro Odqh! This kind of cipher is called a Caesar cipher. In this class, we also learnt about the history of spying. We wrote a fictional spy story, made decoder wheels and rings, and made our own model of a spy gadget.
My next camp was called “Unlocking the Genetic Code”. As you can tell, this camp was all about genetics. This camp was very interesting too! In the beginning, however, I did not like this camp. My teacher made us do a lot of worksheets. I thought that this was supposed to be summer vacation! After a few days, we did a lot of hands on things, such as making a model strand of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) using pasta, beads, and pipe cleaners. I did the DNA of a gorilla. We also did virtual experiments on the Internet through the Smart Board. We did DNA extractions on the Smart Board too. One of my most favorite things was going on a website called Kahoot! It was a quiz website and the teacher made a quiz that we did and whoever answered the question first would get the most points. At the end of the quiz, whoever had the most points, won. All in all, this turned out to be a great camp.
My sister had “Inventive Minds at Work” and “Diving into Marine Science” for her classes and she loved them too.
By this time, you may be wondering if SIG is on my Cool Lane or not. I’ve hidden it somewhere in this blog post and you have to try to find it! If you find it, comment and let me know!
