Camps for Ages 8–10
Full-day camps, 9 a.m.–3 p.m.
Take your interest in art and natural history to the next level! Each day invites campers to new behind-the-scenes explorations of our museums—whether it’s meeting scientists, investigating collections, conducting hands-on experiments, or transforming the classroom into a walk-through diorama. Join other young artists and investigators as you handle exciting materials, learn new techniques, and invent artworks as unique as you are.
Children must be at least eight years old as of the first day of their camp.
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June 11–15
Neighborhoods in My City
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
Explore a neighborhood on foot and in paintings! Board our charter bus with a team of architect chaperones for a day visiting a local neighborhood and exploring a main street and local housing styles. Design a neighborhood of your own and see how it connects with your classmates’ to build a city.
Planet Protection Agency
Help save the planet! Get serious about conservation, waste reduction, and recycling. Investigate important issues such as urban heat islands, acid rain, flooding, landfills, and more. Design games and projects that help you decide how to make the biggest green impact. Run experiments to learn how plants filter air and recycle water. Venture into the world of decomposition by testing the speed at which materials break down in water and soil, and make a worm composting bin to take home. Re-purpose recycled materials while learning about the life cycle of metals, plastics, and other manufactured products.
June 18–22
Castles, Knights, Dragons: A Medieval Adventure
Lords and Ladies! Travel back in time and experience life during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Try your hand at metalsmithing, heraldry, textiles, architecture, and painting as you discover medieval mythology and monsters! If you participated in this camp last year, no need to worry: This summer you can experience all-new activities, games, and projects related to the magnificent Middle Ages!
It's About Time
Travel through time and space to explore the patterns of change. Analyze fossils and artifacts that document how Earth has evolved over time. Journal your discoveries and illustrate your own history. Interpret geologic traces of the past to recreate prehistoric ecosystems. Study amazing teeth, claws, and even brains as you track evolution over the past 500 million years. Follow weather patterns and link them to the seasonal adaptations of animals. Discover the interesting ways that people mark time in different cultures—from celestial calendars to banana clocks! Create a pictorial calendar of the important events in your own life.
June 25–29
ARToons
Find humor and stories in art. Get inspiration from characters and settings in the museum’s collection, and then develop your own ideas into characters and a comic strip to share with family and friends. Collaborate with your classmates to produce a graphic novel and take a copy home with you at the end of the week.
Kid Stuff: Games & Toys
From Calder’s mobile to a giant-sized sandwich, see works by artists who take a playful approach to making art. Bring your favorite stuffed animals, toys, or games to use as arrangements for still-life paintings. Map the museum and make a museumthemed board game. Get inspired by sculptures and portraits and make your own art-character action figure and trading cards to share with your new camp friends.
Eco Adventure
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
If you love the outdoors, this camp is for you! Each day finds you exploring animals in different ecosystems. In a series of hikes through nearby Schenley Park, hunt for salamanders, set up a leaf pack to trap aquatic bugs, and compare the biodiversity found in flowing streams and the still water of Panther Hollow Lake. Go underground by setting up ecosystems for ants, worms, and beetles. Peek in on the lives of bugs, birds, and mammals in and around trees. Investigate strategies for soaring through the air as you design a tiny glider. Test wind and air currents to discover what flies highest, fastest, and farthest.
July 2–6
Cast Away
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
The life-sized sculptures in the museum’s Halls of Architecture and Sculpture are really plaster casts of famous monuments and sculptures from the past. Model your own sculptures in clay, make molds, and cast them in plaster. Take a day off on Wednesday, July 4, to let your plaster casts dry. Make your sculptures stand the test of time!
July 9–13
Museum Time Machine
Design and build a time machine that takes you on a blast to the past—or fast-forward into the future. Sketch art and architecture from ancient civilizations, the Renaissance, and the 21st century, and create a mixedmedia time capsule to tell people about your moment in time. Experiment with historical art-making techniques using clay, paint, and other materials—all with a modern twist. Create your own paintings, sculptures, drawings, and architectural models.
Painting Landscapes
With day trip to Powdermill Nature Reserve
Find inspiration in collections and the exhibition Impressionism in a New Light: From Monet to Stieglitz as you learn style, technique, and history of painting outdoors. Explore paint application and color theory in our museum studios before a one-day trip to Powdermill Nature Reserve, the environmental research center of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Work on a landscape painting on the nature reserve’s grounds. Spend a full day outdoors just like the Impressionists. Late pick-up around 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Field trip fee: $35.
Egyptian Exploration
Join a world of fascinating customs and arts as you explore Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt. Examine Egyptian architecture and build a model city. Decode archaeological mysteries as you translate hieroglyphics and look for symbolic patterns in artifacts. Get creative with larger-than-life mural painting, pottery, and more as you transform your classroom into an Egyptian tomb. Study the significance of animals in ancient Egyptian culture. Learn to play the 5,000-year-old game Senet and make a game board to take home. The science of mummification will astound you when you try it on your own hot dog model!
July 16–20
Dance Your "Art" Out
Five, six, seven, eight! Have fun creating art and dance for a Friday performance open to family and friends. Spend half of the day learning the moves with a dance teacher, and the other half creating colorful costumes and spectacular scenery with an art teacher.
Castles, Knights, Dragons: A Medieval Adventure
Lords and Ladies! Travel back in time and experience life during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Try your hand at metalsmithing, heraldry, textiles, architecture, and painting as you discover medieval mythology and monsters! If you participated in this camp last year, no need to worry: This summer you can experience all-new activities, games, and projects related to the magnificent Middle Ages!
Get Lost
With day trip to Powdermill Nature Reserve
The world is a big place where you can easily get lost! Learn techniques in survival and orienteering that help you find your way around. Survey the sky for navigational signs and learn how to properly use a map and compass. Investigate the survival adaptations of animals in extreme environments and develop your own safety skills. On a one-day trip to Powdermill Nature Reserve, the museum’s environmental research center, put your newfound skills to the test as you build a natural shelter, blaze trails, and build a campfire. Late pick-up at 6:30 p.m. on field trip day. Field trip fee: $35.
July 23–27
The Art of Performance
Get inspired by video and performance art in addition to paintings and sculptures as you bring art to life during live performances. Surprise museum campers and visitors while participating in a flash mob in the museum’s galleries and lobbies. Work with a theater specialist and studio artist to learn acting techniques, design scenery, and create costumes for the grand finale performance on Friday.
Building Big
Skyscrapers! Stadiums! Megamalls! Everything in this camp is big, Big, BIG! Build models of big buildings and zoom in to make details of the special parts of your designs. Create a large drawing of your oversized ideas.
Dinosaur Detectives
Sleuth around a planet ruled by massive plant eaters and vicious carnivores! Witness the tumultuous rule of the dinosaurs and unearth clues as to how our planet has changed since the Mesozoic Era. Uncover the facts behind fossilized footprints and dinosaur behavior, and piece together how dinosaurs lived and died. Take a hike around the museum and nearby Schenley Park to compare your world to that of the dinosaurs. Make predictions and test your ideas about dinosaur movement and balance. Calculate the size and speed of a dinosaur from its footprint. Study the properties of minerals and rocks to learn about the geology behind fossil hunting.
Bling! Material Culture Meets Materials Science
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
What does your stuff say about you? Analyze specimens from the museum’s anthropology collection, and then turn your eye toward our own culture. You will appreciate how unique resources from around the world influence cultures and are transformed into beautiful handicraft. Get creative by making jewelry and other accessories from plants, feathers, minerals, and more. Uncover the science behind color, shape, and sparkle. Extract pigments from plants and examine 8–10 ages iridescence in the nanostructures of a butterfly wing. Get a close-up look at specimens in Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems, test the flexibility of metals, and grow your own crystals.
July 30–August 3
Painting Landscapes
With day trip to Powdermill Nature Reserve
Find inspiration in collections and the exhibition Impressionism in a New Light: From Monet to Stieglitz as you learn style, technique, and history of painting outdoors. Explore paint application and color theory in our museum studios before a one-day trip to Powdermill Nature Reserve, the environmental research center of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Work on a landscape painting on the nature reserve’s grounds. Spend a full day outdoors just like the Impressionists. Late pick-up around 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Field trip fee: $35.
ARToons
Find humor and stories in art. Get inspiration from characters and settings in the museum’s collection, and then develop your own ideas into characters and a comic strip to share with family and friends. Collaborate with your classmates to produce a graphic novel and take a copy home with you at the end of the week.
Extreme Events: Water & Weather
Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis—our planet is subject to incredible natural forces that constantly affect life on Earth. Explore how people, animals, and ecosystems have responded to natural disasters throughout geologic time. Make models showing climate change that occurred after the Cretaceous extinctions, and investigate specimens throughout the museum to understand how animals evolved in response to extreme events. Conduct an experiment to learn how tornadoes and hurricanes form. Re-create ocean currents and predict how they could change over time. Build boats and structures to test outside in a tsunami pool!
August 6–10
Art Olympics
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
Become an art athlete just in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics! Test your endurance in this art pentathlon, as you draw, paint, print, sculpt, and collage. Team up in art relays and make your own Art Olympic medals. Create a clay figure of an athlete in action inspired by athletes in art—swimmers, archers, and even discus throwers—in the museum’s collection.
Dream House
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
Design a house limited only by your imagination! Get inspired by architectural drawings, models, and artworks in the galleries that represent houses from around the world and throughout history. Create floor plans, elevations, sections, and a model of the house of your dreams. Share your architectural drawings and models with your family and friends on the last day of camp.
Eye Spy
Do you have an eye for detail? Do you like to puzzle through patterns? Join us for a museum micro-adventure to unearth some of the smallest specimens we have on display. Analyze patterns and make connections between cultural artifacts and the natural world. Learn how your brain decodes fine detail by experimenting with light and color. Use a microscope to compare the eye structure of insects, fish, and mammals. Investigate a real cow eyeball using age-appropriate dissection tools and techniques.
August 13–17
North American Explorer
From the Arizona desert to the Arctic Circle, from Pennsylvania’s woodlands to the Pacific Northwest—discover how regional environments relate to American Indian traditions. Ponder how life would be if you had to rely only on local resources to survive. Experiment with the conditions for irrigation and sprouting seeds. Grind corn and use your cornmeal to make snacks. Raise a tipi. Compare insulation and water resistance in building materials and clothing. Try different methods for carrying heavy loads across an obstacle course in a transportation relay race. Learn about animals from different ecosystems by examining skeletons, skins, and specimens.