Children looking for a summer camp with a twist may find it at Iowa Mennonite School.

IMS offers sports, drama, and art summer camps, but this year they’ve added a new slew of creative programs for kids interested in mysteries, building toys, or grilling. IMS faculty Juanita Benedict describes how she got involved, “Candi Schmieder, one of our staff members, sent out an email to everyone saying that she was hoping that some of the staff would be interested in some other camps. I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, so I came up with a whole list of ideas and then I weeded it down to three, and I chose three different types of camps and three different age groups to see what people were interested in and what they might like to do and things I thought would be fun.”

June 26-28 she will instruct the grilling camp for 7th and 8th graders, toy maker camp is for 5th and 6th graders July 24-27, and then mystery camp is for 4th and 5th graders July 17-21, which Benedict describes, “We’re going to play detective. We’ll do things like collecting and analyzing fingerprints, hair fiber identification. We’ll use decoding to find out clues, we might look at some things that sketch artists do.”

Registration for the grilling camp is due June 17, and for the mystery and toy maker camps the deadline is July 8. You can register for the IMS summer camps on their website.