KU News Release

Day camps at KU’s Natural History Museum now registering

LAWRENCE — First the University of Kansas Natural History Museum encouraged kids to play with their food. Now the museum wants them to get muddy, dig for fossils, launch rockets and solve mysteries at its summer camps.

The museum’s camps are hands-on science activities for boys and girls ages 8-11. The one-day camps are scheduled from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 18-28. Registration for each $80 camp begins May 1. Scholarship support is available for qualifying children.

The camps are in the same educational spirit as “Play with Your Food,” a spring break event at the museum that helped children learn the science behind flying marshmallows, glowing pickles and exploding cornstarch.

In Geocaching (gee-oh-cashing), for example, children learn how to use a Global Positioning Unit and the basics of navigation in a high-tech scavenger hunt. Children become sleuths in Forensic Fun to help solve a fictionalized museum crime using techniques such as footprint and fingerprint identification and hair and DNA analysis.

In Aquatic Biology, they wade into local waterways to discover aquatic plants and get up close to creatures such as bullfrogs, dragonflies, crayfish, clams and spiders. Other camps involve astronomy (Space Odyssey), fossil discoveries (Dinosaur Detectives) and rocks, minerals and fossils (Geology Explorations).

“These camps explore challenging science topics in fun and engaging ways, ” said Teresa MacDonald, director of public education at the museum. “They are designed to open kids’ eyes to the science in the world around them.”

For more information about the camps, including registration and scholarship applications, visit the museum's Web site or call (785) 864-4173.

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