By Max McCombs
Staff Intern

The Leander Parks and Recreation Department will offer a pair of camps this summer designed to give local youngsters their first taste of engineering, but with a familiar medium: LEGO.
“We think kids will want to attend these camps because of the timeless appeal of LEGO. It’s very still much a popular part of our culture,” Parks and Recreation Programmer Christian Moore said. “We’re hoping by offering a camp where kids will build bridges and vehicles that actually move, they’ll get to learn some engineering along the way while still having fun.”
The camps, conducted by Play-Well TEK, will be offered in two week-long sessions. The first is July 19-23 and the second is August 16-20.
Two different camps will be offered at each session: a Pre-Engineering camp for children ages 5-6 from 9 a.m. to noon each morning and a FUNdamentals of Engineering camp for children ages 7-11 from 1 to 4 p.m. each afternoon. Both camps still have open slots. Call 528-9909 if interested.
A staff trained by the engineers who founded the programs will run the camp, one of the first of its kind offered by Play-Well TEK in the region.
“This is the first year that we’ve offered the LEGO program,” Moore said. “This is a program that is just starting to expand into the Texas market. We compared that with the demographics of our community and felt it would be a pretty positive fit.”