HCYR's Summer Program provides a full slate of choices for earning

money, having fun, and selecting areas for personal learning and growth

Summer is a key part of every child’s experience at HCYR. Everyone is required to participate fully.  Choices are available, depending on the youth’s maturity and progress. The summer is divided into two parts. During the first half, residents take part in a scheduled set of structured electives, including vocational, educational, and recreational activities. A group meeting starts each day, and most of the children go out with one of eight work crews to garden, landscape, or trim trees.  Afternoons are full of skill-building electives like music, dance and arts classes, sports training, or educational electives. 

In the month before school starts, residents have time for leisure activities, travel and special projects.  With most of the rest of the year highly scheduled, it is deemed a good thing for family units to make up their own schedules during this period, spend days quietly relaxing or perhaps planning a special family trip to a state park or to the ocean, or even to another state to widen horizons.  Sometimes, the whole Ranch family works together to plan events during this time, having traveled in past years to Disneyland, Yellowstone Park, and the Grand Canyon, to name a few destinations.