AURELIUS - As the United States works to confront global warming and find solutions to the world's energy crisis, a local summer camp is trying to propel a band of children to the movement's forefront.

Deep within the Cayuga-Onondaga Board of Cooperative Educational Services Regional Education Center, 22 fifth- and sixth-grade students learned about clean and alternative energies during the first-ever Green Energy Kids camp.

Students from each of the nine component school districts came to the four-day camp this week to learn through a hands-on approach about various forms of alternative energies, including solar, thermal, photovoltaics and wind.

That included Daniel Aikman, 11, of Auburn, whose interest in preserving the Earth's environment motivated him to attend.

“If we continue to use non-renewable resources,” he said, “we won't be able to live.”

From Tuesday until today, students not only learned, but got to see, touch and build technology that uses clean energy. They built solar hot dog cookers out of Pringles containers Wednesday to cook their lunch and on Thursday assembled solar cars from kits.

BOCES teacher Ray Ludemann believes these activities will plant the seed for further interest when students get older. With a greater push being placed on developing these technologies, Ludemann believes these students can emerge on the forefront of the industry.

“We figured we should start earlier than 17,” he said, “trying to get them interested in the industry.”

Ludemann conceived of the camp more than a year ago, recognizing the benefit to introducing green technology to students at a young age. He approached then Principal of Career and Technical Education Bill Speck - who is now the BOCES superintendent - about offering the camp and obtaining some funds to do so.

Speck applied for a grant from Partnership for Results, an organization that also finances BOCES' Career Connections Camp, and obtained roughly $9,000.

Science teachers in each of the nine area schools nominated students to participate in the camp, which Ludemann piloted this week along with Southern Cayuga Central School District science teacher Frank Benenati. Campers built wind turbines, saw a natural gas car up-close and learned about thermal heating systems by looking at a mock-up of one built by BOCES high school students obtained through a partnership with Earth Sensitive Solutions.

If the camp is successful, the plan is to integrate it with the Career Connections Camp, an annual four-day camp during the third week of July that endeavors to teach rising seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders about various careers in a hands-on learning environment.

Both teachers are taking notes at the end of each session, evaluating what they did right and what can be done differently to adequately plan for next year.

“We're going to be doing it again,” Ludemann said. “I'm sure of it.”

That would be good news for students like Jacob Brandstetter and Laura Fennessy, who each see a career in the green industry.

“I really want to do this when I grow up,” Brandstetter, 12, of Auburn, said.

On Wednesday, both Brandstetter and Fennessy pulled a recoil to start a plasma reaction engine built by former BOCES teacher Rob Evans. The engine requires some sort of fuel to run, but that doesn't just have to be gasoline. Campers dumped into a bottle some pickle juice, soda and salt, and the engine still ran off the vapors the fuel generated.

“I really liked all the experiments we do,” said Fennessy, 11, of Auburn, after she was able to start the plasma reaction engine. One of her favorite experiments was building the wind turbine.

“I just liked to see how fast our windmill went,” she said.