Camp Wonderopolis in libraries: Clinton Hill Library
Clinton Hill library, located in New York, was one of three libraries across the country to be awarded a grant to be a Camp Wonderopolis site. Brian Muldoon, Children’s Librarian, shared the following about their program.
We are thrilled to be partnering with the National Center for Families Learning this summer! As a library situated in a diverse and rapidly changing neighborhood, we understand the importance of working to engage all the families in our community, and the whole family at that. For our Wonderopolis workshops, we are focusing on providing children and their caregivers with learning experiences that will give them new perspectives on art, science, and more (all within the musical theme of this year’s camp). We thought of no better way to kick things off than with a Maker project that totally flips the way our families hear sound on its head. Using some plastic industrial tubing, funnels, zip-ties, and a generous amount of duct tape, we had our campers create crazy Sound Flipping Headphones that channels all the sound coming from your right side to your left ear and all the sound from your left side to your right ear. The results are a little weird and a bit disorienting but totally cool! They also offer a unique way to explore the way sound travels and how the brain processes auditory information.
After settling in with some snacks and an overview of the Camp Wonderopolis website we set to work on the project. Our families had a great time designing, constructing and playing with their headphones, some of them got really creative with the duct tape. One of the best things about this project is that it works best when you have another person to play with, so it was nice to see different families experimenting with their creations together. Some of them did things like have a camper don their headphones while two people engaged in a conversation on either side of them, along with other creative ways to help each other enter a whole new world of sensory perception. As a very noticeably way of experiencing how perceptual adaptation works, I encouraged a couple of the campers to wear their headphones for an extended period of time to see if they would eventually get used to hearing things flipped. Those who tried it said it did get less strange over time and thought it was pretty cool to discover just how flexible their brains can be.
Everyone is very much looking forward to what Camp has to offer for the rest of the summer!
Interested in bringing Camp Wonderopolis to your program? Camp Wonderopolis online learning content is free year-round for individuals, families, classrooms, and programs. Visit camp.wonderopolis.org to explore five unique editions of Camp Wonderopolis, each loaded with 42 lessons, six Maker activities, book lists, and more. To enhance your program, NCFL offers Campsite Kits available for purchase. Receive support and guidance to integrate Camp Wonderopolis into your programming when you purchase the Program Kit at store.wonderopolis.org.