Space camp is a summer option

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By Nancy Badertscher

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Kids aren’t going to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., like they once did. So the space center’s coming to them.

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The space center’s traveling classroom will be center stage at two five-day summer camps being hosted this year by the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta.

One of the camps will be held in Dunwoody with the other in east Cobb. The cost is $385 for center members and $460 for non-members.

Wannabe space travelers will be building a replica of a space shuttle, complete with mission control, said Jared Powers, MJCCA’s director of camps.

“They learn the lingo,” said Al Whitaker, media relations manager for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. “They play astronaut, the whole thing.”

The rocket center has brought its traveling classroom to metro Atlanta before. But this is the first time it will include a rocketry program, said Melissa Snider, camp education programs manager at the Huntsville center.

The MJCCA’s camp will be the first summer camp program in the South to take on the Build-A-Shuttle project, Snider said.

“We specialize in far-out fun that just happens to be educational,” he said.

Powers is expecting a busy registration day Sunday for the space camp and the center’s many other day camp programs, including Lego robotics, aviation creation and Tour D’Atlanta cycling.

The space camp in Dunwoody at Zaban Park will be held July 25-29. The one in east Cobb at Shirley Blumenthal Park is scheduled July 18-22.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s space camp in Huntsville has had more than 530,000 graduates, Whitaker said. The camps were most popular in the 1980s, he said.

“We use the space camp curriculum as a vehicle to sell math and science,” Whitaker said. “For some, it becomes the first real-world application of math and science.”

Camp registration locations are: MJCCA, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody; and Shirley Blumenthal Park, 2509 Post Oak Tritt Road, Marietta. For information, visit www.atlantajcc.org.