Summer vacation may be in full swing, but don’t tell that to the students who attended Camp Invention at Kennedy Elementary School last week.

About 50 of Barrow County’s gifted students attended the five-day camp, which featured science-related activities encouraging students to work on their problem-solving skills and have a good time doing it.

"Children who attend Camp Invention learn skills enhancing abilities to brainstorm, solve problems and work as a team," said Leigh Sears, Barrow County Schools Camp Invention Director. "As educators and parents, we know that children should continue sharpening these skills as we enter an era in which critical thinking will be extremely important to the future."

Students were divided into three groups in the morning and rotated among three different stations: Saving Sludge City, Planet Zak and Imagination Point.

Counselor and teacher Katie Wilkes manned the Saving Sludge City station, which allows students to discover the best ways to filter water, how to build a eco-friendly city and the right way to build a landfill.

Students used construction paper, boxes, duct tape, old soda bottles and other recyclables to construct their own cities in the classroom and put the finishing touches on them Friday.

"I gave them all the same materials, but they all look totally different," Wilkes said of the cities. "One group thought a fire station was important, and another group created a solar-powered bus that picks up everyone in town."

Move to the adjacent classroom and you’d find students getting ready to shoot off rockets and learning how to sustain life on another planet.

"They started out pretending they had crash landed on a place called Planet Zak, and they had to design their own clothing and shelter," Sears explained. "Then they pretended there was a swamp in the middle of the room and a food source on the other side, so they had to design a contraption to get to the other side."

The third classroom was just as action-packed, as students perfected roller coasters to put Newton’s Three Laws of Motion into practice.

"We call it free fall because we have a huge drop," said camper Isaac St. Clair about his group’s finished roller coaster, which is designed with fluffy cotton ball clouds, blue construction paper skies and a hot air balloon flying above.

The free fall drop levels off a few inches off the floor and curves around, which lets you, as fellow group member Michael Wiedemann puts it, "slow down right here so you have enough time to wipe the puke off your shirt before you keep going."

In addition to the three stations, the students had to make an invention to solve an everyday problem and build something that would crack open an egg.

The counselors were there to help students along, but the program emphasizes individual work and creativity, Sears said.

"That’s what this camp is all about — problem-solving. And they did it all by themselves," she said.