Although they won't have to do any "homework" while they're at Catapult, the students are welcome to use our library facilities if they need to do research for their project. One of our awesome library staff members showed the monkeys some of those resources after morning meeting; thankfully, we have a lot of online resources in addition to our physical collection, which is being renovated at the moment. After that, the students did some teaming activities in the Union before selecting their projects.

This was also the first day students ate in our dining hall, known to most on campus as the ARA (as it's catered by Aramark). From what I heard, our food is pretty good compared to those legendary high school cafeterias.

In the afternoon, the students met their project advisors - the full Ph.D. faculty members that will be assisting with their projects. All the profs that do Catapult are pretty awesome; I've had 1 of them personally and among the counselors we've had almost all, if not all, of these professors in class ourselves. They're picked specifically for their desire and ability to work with high school students; they're also known as some of the most "fun" professors on campus. If you'd like to talk with them over email, check out the Contact Us section for their emails (your son or daughter can tell you who their advisor is).

After dinner, the professors go home and the real fun starts. Today, we had some get-to-know-you games in our Sports and Recreation Center fieldhouse. Some of the games we played are described at the end of this post.

Finally, Midnight Madness — something super-fun that we do every night at midnight — started tonight with a trip to Steak 'n Shake (a Midwest classic). We had several students who had never been there before... but they'll definitely be going back!

Get-To-Know-You games

The Name Game

The first student in the circle begins by stating his name and performing a stretch. The next student then does the same, and then repeats the first student's stretch. By the time the last student in the circle has gone, most of the names are pretty solid. Some students took the challenge and were able to successfully name each individual around the circle at the end.

Freeze Tag

The grade school classic. Turns out it's a bit harder if you have to exchange names when you unfreeze someone, especially once the counselors start taking away nametags!

Balance the Bottle

Each monkey grabs a rope attached to a circular wooden platform on which a Coke bottle is balanced. They have to transport the bottle around the basketball hoop without dropping it. For added challenge, certain groups of people weren't allowed to talk at any given time (ex. the people with glasses, the women, the men, the people with flip-flops on, etc.).

Never Have I Ever...

Kind of like musical chairs, Never Have I Ever has a place for all but one student around the circle. The one student names something they've never done ("Never have I ever... been in a car crash"), and every person around the circle has to run to another place if they've done that activity.