Kids learn, have fun at Victoria College summer camps | News
Victoria College is no stranger to nontraditional students, but its newest enrollees are a little bit young even by neighborhood higher education expectations.
That’s for the reason that the summer months is time for VC’s “Kids College” program, a collection of educational day camps for neighborhood small children.

3 distinct camps are likely on this week, each individual with a various target: a Lego engineering session, vogue designer session and survival strategies session.
It is the to start with time due to the fact the start out of the COVID-19 pandemic that VC has been able to set together a ordinary summer time camp software, Workforce and Continuing Instruction Software Coordinator Mary Hardy mentioned. While the college has been able to do a handful of-in individual classes in 2021, enrollment was down, and they also held virtual camps.
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Gallery: Young ones Faculty
The campers at Tuesday morning’s Lego engineering camp were certainly pleased to be there in particular person.
They weren’t functioning with any regular Legos, however. Rather, the paired-off campers were placing jointly Lego equipment powered by manually compressed air.
1 pair, 10-year-olds Sebastian Orozco and Brody Bickerdike, had been building a Lego scissor elevate. Immediately after the boys pumped air into the raise from a hand pump, they ended up able to just flip a change on their create and check out it elevate into the air by itself.
Instructor Janie Rodriguez mentioned the campers would shift on to more difficult energy sources like photo voltaic panels later in the week.
Brody Bickerdike, 10, is effective on developing a scissor elevate using Legos all through the Lego Engineering session of Little ones College or university on Tuesday inside of the Victoria Faculty Emerging Technological innovation Sophisticated.
Rodriguez, who’s an elementary college teacher in San Antonio in the course of the university yr, will work for Fastforward Young children, one of the providers that VC works with to set on its Little ones Faculty plans. The firm holds related camps all over Texas just about every summer time.
The Lego engineering camp attempts to introduce the young children to STEM-centered problem resolving, Rodriguez said. The campers have to total exercise routines like figuring out how to make a Lego volcano erupt or building a maze for marbles devoid of instructions, but actually, their favored component is commonly the cost-free-setting up time, the place they can permit their creativity run wild.
Nayeli Martinez and Lilyan McDonald, aged 10 and 8, echoed that idea and explained they both like to play with Legos at home, nevertheless they didn’t have the cool air-powered Legos they had been finding to establish at camp. The pair was doing work on their initially develop of the working day, a development crane, which was laid out in parts throughout their desk.

Other campers sorted through bins of loose Lego bricks and connectors in the back of the room, hunting for the correct piece for their in-progress creation, or double-checked their recommendations to make certain they experienced the specifics correct.
This week’s periods have about 60 youngsters completely, Hardy explained, and the faculty also hosted a sequence of nature-centered camps previous 7 days, in partnership with the Mid-Coastline chapter of Texas Learn Naturalists. People campers figured out about critical environmental topics, this kind of as pollinators and bouquets, wild chicken rehabilitation and h2o-primarily based ecosystems.
The other Youngsters University classes this 7 days — vogue style and design and survival techniques — train little ones how to set on vogue exhibits, coordinate designs, purify water and accomplish very first help.
A scissor elevate in the type of Legos produced by college students all through the Lego Engineering session of Little ones Higher education on Tuesday inside of the Victoria University Rising Engineering Sophisticated.
Ian Grenier covers K-12 and greater education for the Victoria Advocate. You can get to him at [email protected].