Story and photos courtesy of Moore Norman Marketing Communications. Photos appear only in Techniques print edition.

Education still goes on during the summer months at one technology center in Oklahoma. The students may be a little younger, but they are having a large amount of fun while learning things in a different way.

While many schools and technology centers turn out the lights and lock the classroom doors each year at the end of May, Moore Norman Technology Center (MNTC) in Oklahoma is just getting started.

One of MNTC?s employees started looking at summer educational programs for her three daughters. Most of what she found was ?glorified babysitting.?

She wanted to develop summer classes at MNTC that would challenge kids, keep them in a learning mode and let them have fun at a whole new level. So the concept of Summer Youth Academy was born. Seven years later and with 1,141 enrollments just this past summer, MNTC calls this program a success.

Hair Rage, Easy Electronics and Raving Robotics are just a few of the summer classes nine- to 16-year-olds can experience during their summer months off from school.

An Enriching Summer

The Summer Youth Academy is an educational enrichment program that challenges children in their specific areas of interest and gives them the opportunity to explore programs not available during their regular school year.

Students meet for one week either in the morning or afternoon, and if they enroll in three classes ($65 per class), they get a fourth class free. Materials for the programs are provided by MNTC.

Classes are age appropriate, and instruction is delivered through guided activities, hands-on practice and lab activities. Instructors come from the Moore, Norman and Oklahoma City areas and are usually teachers, former students and local professionals.

Aside from all the experience the children get while in their programs, many of the class projects they are involved in meet Girl and Boy Scout merit badge requirements.

Students learn concepts that can put them ahead of their classmates through the introduction of new ideas and reinforcement of past knowledge. For example, in Awesome Astronomy, students experience outer space while learning the major constellations. They make constellation creations, spots on the sun, golf ball moons, water-propelled rocketry, a visible planet model and track the sun for a day.

Youthful Testimonials

McKinley Elementary fifth-grader Stephen Meiller enrolled in Carpentry, Raving Robotics, Awesome Astronomy and Advanced Robotics. He made a wooden bench in carpentry using different sanders and drills and points out that students are required to wear goggles and masks while working with the machines.

?I like these classes because I have a better understanding of the different machines carpenters use and how they work. Our instructor said he has to be around us while we use the machines, and then he lets us finish out our project,? says Meiller. ?My parents are really interested in my classes?every evening my dad asks me about the things I learned in class. The classes also make us use our brains differently than other summer camps.?

In Vigorous Volcanoes, kids explore all of the sizzling, oozing and exploding facts about volcanoes through the creation of edible experiments and constructing a volcano.

In Easy Electronics, kids learn electric safety and build their own project using capacitors, transistors, resistors and IC sockets.

Fishing for Fun Instructor Katherine Turner says that, within three days, her students had caught more than 600 fish at the MNTC campus ponds.

McKinley Elementary fourth-grader Hayley St. John enrolled in a course called Acting Out. ?We learned how stage productions are made, all about props and words like center stage, stage left and stage right,? she says. ?I like getting to make up skits by ourselves?it?s fun.?

The future for Summer Youth Academy is in the classes offered. MNTC keeps up with trends in technology and careers and will continue to introduce children to these industry concepts as early as possible.

It seems that Moore Norman Technology Center has found a way to utilize buildings and taxpayers? money during typical ?down times? and teach kids that education can be fun.