We asked our staff to report on the outcomes of the Trails Summer Camp. What they came up with was a list of everything they played, built, explored, and imagined together. And what they said they were most proud of isn't any single project — it's how much of it started with the kids themselves. Given the smallest bit of room to run, they filled it with ideas none of the adults could have dreamed up, and those ideas almost always led somewhere wonderful.

In the last two months, TRAILS Summer Camp at Neighborhood North...

• Made hundreds of pieces of art — cartoons, paintings, drawings, and more
• Tended our tomato plants with water collected from the rain, and buried dinosaur bones in a swamp of our own creation
• Broke the sound barrier slinging each other down the zipline at the playground
• Played a museum-wide game of The Floor Is Lava that culminated in a head-to-head tic-tac-toe battle with the Volcano King
• Learned how to safely use drills, hammers, and hot glue guns in our Maker Space
• Designed miniature kingdoms and collaborated to care for our imaginary subjects
• Built camera obscuras — the mythical ancestor of the modern-day iPhone camera — out of cardboard
• Simulated a zombie apocalypse
• Explored the labyrinthine Carnegie library and borrowed books from its collection
• Climbed to incredible (and often terrifying) heights on the jungle gym
• Improvised, directed, and performed an action movie in the theater room
• Played the world's most anarchic games of basketball
• Came face-to-face with lions and elephants at the Pittsburgh Zoo
• Created haiku poetry and installed it as public art
• Built giant castles with foam blocks — and knocked them down like Godzilla
• Built tiny castles with Lego bricks — and knocked them down like Godzilla
• Got lost in worlds of endless, unforgettable, world-shaping imagination
• Wrestled, ran, leapt, screamed, smiled, laughed, wept, cursed, apologized, encouraged, loved — and, most importantly, PLAYED

Thank you for trusting us with your kids' summer. We can't wait to see what they dream up next.