With about 75 hectares of rainforest to run around in, it’s not surprising that West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park summer camps have been a popular choice for more than 10 years.
The five-day camps for kids ages seven to 12 feature a variety of outside games that use the park as a backdrop.
“I don’t think many other places can say that they have a large forest that they’re able to run a camp in,” says Alison Lea, of West Vancouver Parks and Community Services.
Campers use a hut at the bottom of the park as a base, but most of the day is spent outdoors, rain or shine.
Each morning, campers enjoy familiar games, such as Capture the Flag.
In the afternoon, however, the kids explore a wider area of the park and play games that access more of the vast network of trails.
“One of the main things that Lighthouse Park is known for is for something called big boundary games and that’s kind of what the kids look forward to,” explains Lea.
At the beginning of the week, kids are taken on a boundary walk and shown what is in bounds and what is not. They also learn about park safety. When the big boundary games are in session, campers are partnered up so no one roams the park on their own.
They play games with names like Survivor, Colours, and Pirates and Cargo.
Each week of the camp has a theme and sometimes the games follow that theme. Other times, they are just the popular games the kids ask for each year.
Although there isn’t structured learning scheduled into the day, Lea says kids learn a lot just by playing and having fun out in nature.
“It’s one of those camps where it’s almost a learn-by-doing camp, so a lot of the younger campers will learn from the older campers or volunteers how to play the games or how to interact with each other, and I think the flexibility of this camp and how adventurous and exciting it is kind of allows for that free-flowing learning rather than a little bit more structured,” she says.
While the kids are expected to be outdoors as much as possible, Lea says if there is a torrential downpour campers can retreat to the hut. There they play Charades, the Name Game, Evolution (a rock-paper-scissors hybrid) and more.
Although anyone is welcome, Lea says this camp is suited to kids who enjoy playing outdoors and who don’t mind getting a bit of mud on their shoes.
“You’ve got to get a little bit dirty when you’re playing the games, so it’s generally a kid that doesn’t mind huffing and puffing by the end of the day and being a little bit dirty.”
The camp is capped off with an optional sleepover on the Thursday night of the week (participants have to register separately for the sleepover).
Lea says the sleepover in the park is a fun night of glow-in-the-dark games, hot chocolate, movies and more.
The next day is beach day, so those kids who over-indulged in marshmallows or stayed up a bit past their bedtime can relax in the sand rather than run through the woods.
Lea says the campers who usually do the sleepover are ones who have done it before, or who go with a friend or older sibling. A lot of kids return each year to the Lighthouse Park camp, and those who outgrow the camp after age 12 may be able to return as volunteers when they are 13 or 14.
Lea says the younger kids enjoy having the older kids around and the volunteers get to enjoy playing different roles in the games.
West Vancouver offers a variety of other summer day camps, including camps featuring swimming, gymnastics, cooking, science, music and more. Lea says there is something for every interest.
This story originally appeared in the North Shore News Summer Camps special section, which highlights local summer camps for kids.
