Explore the All-New Camp Invention 2026 Program
What will students experience this year?
Our 2026 program, Spark, empowers students to become confident, capable creators. Through hands-on STEM experiences and challenges that build critical thinking skills, children uncover the power of their creativity and unique ideas.
Campers team up with the Innovation Force® - National Inventors Hall of Fame® Inductees – to unlock the superpowers of the I Can Invent® Mindset and solve challenges in their community and around the world! Campers design and miniaturize a top-secret invention, create a wearable device that incorporates cryptography and explore security features like reCAPTCHA to protect their ideas from The Infringers, who are duplicating inventions. Next, campers race to file a patent to protect their intellectual property.
Students sharpen their detective skills as they discover how real-life investigators use forensic tools to help solve crimes. Inspired by the inner mechanics of their robotic capybara sidekick, students use creative problem-solving skills to create sleuthing gadgets, collect evidence and explore the science behind analyzing fingerprints, DNA and more. Finally, they design an innovative costume for their capybara to wear at the biopark’s biggest social event, the Masquerade Fur Ball, to locate the prankster before another “faux-paw” is committed!
Campers catch their first big break as they ride the waves of entrepreneurship and invention. Inspired by the modern-day surfboard design, they create prototypes to take to market, practice persistence to hook investors and design an eye-catching logo for their company. After conducting hands-on buoyancy experiments, campers draw inspiration from billboard advertisements to create their own billboard boats, setting sail to reach their target audience and “make waves” in the market.
Students stretch their imagination, build a DIY space rocket and launch a mission to terraform a new planet’s atmosphere, terrain and ecosystem. After collecting data and samples in a Rover Race, they hatch a mysterious animal egg, grow a crystal tree and record scientific observations in the Space Lab. As they use their creativity and problem-solving skills to create a model of a planet to support life and future exploration, they glean inspiration from space innovations to build their own solar-sail-like prototype to keep a satellite orbiting their planet. Students complete their space mission by launching a device that will continue to monitor their planet from back on Earth.
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