DECATUR, Ill. (AP) - Kids love “Star Wars,” so there was a lot of enthusiasm when a group of SMASH Jr. campers were shown into a Star Wars-themed puzzle room and told they had to save the universe.
Iverson Woods found a paper covered with code and studied it carefully, while Sydney Walker and other campers looked for hidden keys.
SMASH Sr. campers visited Brainstorm Escapes in Champaign recently and were inspired to create similar puzzle rooms for their younger counterparts, said counselor Tisha Neeley.
“It instills problem-solving and cooperative learning, all those skills go into it,” Neeley said. “Learning their identities and roles in that goes along with our guiding question, ’How do I create change in our world?’”
SMASH camp is for high-achieving students in Decatur public schools, with SMASH Jr. for K-5 students and SMASH Sr. for middle school kids. SMASH Sr. met at Millikin University and SMASH Jr. at Dennis School.
The students explored other cultures, held getting-to-know-you sessions where they talked about their beliefs, priorities and what’s important to them, learned about food and cooking and learned songs from other countries.
As part of exploring their identities, SMASH campers created 3-D avatars expressing some part of their personalities, and adult counselors said they were surprised by what the kids came up with.
Brycton Curry, who will be a freshman at MacArthur High School, built a giant papier mache saxophone. He’s been playing for five years, he said.
Coordinator Kamie Meador said the camp was divided into themes. Besides learning about self, they learned to use the internet with Millikin professors and discern the difference between trustworthy and untrustworthy sites when doing research. During the third week, they visited the escape rooms in Champaign, and the last week, they created their own.
“Then they identified what they have to offer in the classroom, so when they go back, they know, what can I do in the classroom,” Meador said. “They had each other go through their (puzzle) rooms and experience them and kind of critique them so they knew what to change, then they asked SMASH Jr. to come through them and ask them what they can improve.”
A family night culminated the camp experience, when families could see the kids’ projects and spend time at the Requarth Observatory at Millikin.
Cassandra Hustedt works for Brainstorm Escapes and designs the rooms. She visited SMASH Camp on the day the kids unveiled their puzzle rooms.
“Within the last year or so, I’ve been working with local schools, local communities and 4-H camps to try to get escape rooms into curriculum, because it’s a unique way of learning,” Hustedt said.
“You have to solve puzzles and riddles to escape the room,” she continued. “It’s really helpful for people who have difficulty learning in the traditional classroom setting. It’s allowed them to get up and move, which is so important.
“And when you move into the workplace, you have to have the tactical skills of problem-solving and opening locks and critical thinking, communication and collaboration, and it hits all of those things in a really fun event that’s actually memorable.”
The final piece to the puzzle was hidden in a rolled-up screen at the front of the room. Sydney Walker found it.
“It was challenging and put together nicely,” Sydney said of the puzzle room she and her friends solved.
“We just looked everywhere,” Iverson Woods said. “It helped that we all had jobs to do and stuff.”
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Source: (Decatur) Herald & Review, https://bit.ly/2syWTlH
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Information from: Herald & Review, https://www.herald-review.com
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