Boot Camp Gives Kids a Taste of the Military life

If you’re tired of your kids sitting in front of a TV and playing Call of Duty all day long, here’s a chance to show them what military life is really like.

The Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg is holding its fifth annual Boot Camp For Kids, which is designed for kids to learn, have fun and get a taste of what a military boot camp is all about.

But this program is different from other military-styled camps. It isn’t for bad apples, says Joe Horvath, a museum educator and organizer of the camp.

“This is a boot camp where the children have to want to come, not [for] parents send them,” Joe Horvath. “It is more about people getting a little experience of what the actual military is like.”

Horvath says they don’t try to sugarcoat the experience. They try to condense an actual 10-week boot camp into one day.

“We try and do a realistic experience within the eight or nine hours that we have about what’s it’s like to be separated from Mommy and Daddy, your phone, your computer and your friends,” he says.

The kids are split into platoons led by drill instructors, who are all military veterans. The instructors start out loud and intimidating but will also give participants plenty of encouragement along the way.

The training includes marching, dummy rifle drills, and a physical training trail, where kids crawl through tubes, under rope, and carry ammo.

At lunch the kids will be served military-grade MREs, or Meals ready-to-eat, but they are also allowed to bring a packed lunch.

The whole event is designed to get the kids to work as a team, communicate with each other, and most importantly pay attention to detail, says Horvath.

Over the course of the day, instructors will be recording a platoon’s “gigs” —  occasions when recruits don’t follow orders properly.

The platoon with the least amount of “gigs” is named the winner and is dubbed the Super Platoon.

The kids learn that their actions not only affect them, but their entire team, says Horvath.

“For the last three years, the platoon with the smallest kids, or with the smallest stature, have won the Super Platoon status, which is pretty amazing,” Horvath says.

At the end of the day, kids compete in the Kandahar Combat Challenge, where they have to work together as a team in order to guide an electrical spool through an obstacle course.

The event is Aug. 1, but registration, which costs $40, ends on Friday, July 25. The camps starts at 8:45 a.m. and usually lasts until 4 p.m.

You can find the boot camp’s registration forms on the Museum’s website.