By Paige Lambert

Summer is full of fun adventures and camps. Each one has goals to teach a subject, explore careers or practice pre-season.

But sometimes, kids learn so much by just playing.

That’s what the voyager and adventure campers do during the summer-long city of Kyle camps.

Offered by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department (PARD), the camp runs eight weeks of the summer. The camp meets at Wallace Middle School, spanning the typical workday hours. Students in grades two-nine fill each activity.

Elizabeth Livesay, assistant director, said the wide age range is geared to help parents who have multiple kids.

“Kyle is a unique program,” Livesay said. “This one is very community oriented and says a lot about the community and how it cares about its kids and the needs of its parents.”

Second through fifth graders comprise the Voyager camp, while those in sixth-eighth grade are in the Adventurer camp. Each group alternates field trips and activities, which include walks to Gregg-Clarke Park, the Kyle Pool and bus trips to local destinations such as Landa Park and Blazer Tag.

Livesay said doing so creates a better program for each maturity level.

“It allows us, especially with the teen camp, to work on leadership skills, communication and on their social skills,” she said. 

Sticking with the “Gold Rush” theme of the week we visited, the adventurer team looked for golden nuggets all over the park. Each team has to work together to keep as much gold away from the bandits, also known as staffers, as they can.

Livesay cheered on a group, as one kid found a nugget and passed it on to a faster team member.

“It gives them a lot of opportunities to be successful and even if they find a speed bump, the bandits, it doesn’t mean they overall have to give up anything,” she said “If you look at any game we play, it’s a metaphor of how you need to participate in society.”

Livesay said the programs focus on social skills because of its secondary priority during the school year. If a kid is shy he/she might not reach out for a study partner as easily. 

“That kid might not do as well than the kids who have been in camp,” Livesay said. “They are used to making those connections and seeing what it takes to be a social person, such as getting along in groups and working together.”

Depending on the week’s theme and field trip day, the kids also do arts and crafts, environmental activities or listen in to leaders within Hays County. 

Emma Power said her favorite activity is arts and crafts but looks forward to every part of the camp.

“I get to have fun here and just be myself,” Power said.

Many of these social goals are achieved through outdoor games and trips, whether it be to the pool, park or yoga, Livesay said.

“Kids need outdoors. I think it’s so much more beneficial than sitting in front of T.V.,” Ashley Griffin, camp staffer, said. “During the school year they are basically inside 24/7, so to shut them up in the summer doesn’t really make sense.”

Griffin described the games as shoulder-to-shoulder, which makes the campers open up more.

“We do a 1,2,1,2 team, so you’re always with a new person, so you’re bonding a lot that way,” Griffin said. “You’re constantly working with each other.”

A majority of the campers stay all summer or even return for multiple years, Livesay said. Even if it’s the campers’ first week, however, she said she sees a definite change by Friday.  

“They are starting to shave away some of those boundaries till they are able to make that connection with one person or another,” she said.