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When Chris Martinez signed up for veterinarian science classes at the Career and Technology Center's summer camp, he thought it would be like school — a lot of classroom lessons and perhaps an occasional movie.

He was in for a big surprise.

"It was so much fun!" said Chris, an aspiring veterinarian and a rising ninth-grader at Catoctin High School.

During his week at the camp, Chris visited a veterinarian's office, explored an operating room, learned how doctors treat wild animals and even how to read X-rays.

"They even showed us how to tell a break from a fracture," he said. "With a fracture you see just a clean cut on the bone. If it is a break, you get a lot of little pieces of bone."

Chris was one of 250 students who participated in Frederick County Public Schools' Career and Technology Center's career camp — an annual initiative that allows middle-schoolers to sample careers.

The camp, which took place June 22-26, allowed students to explore 27 fields of work, including carpentry and building trades, cosmetology, culinary arts, interior design, archeology, welding and architectural design.

In the cosmetology classes, students practiced giving manicures. In the culinary classes, they made their own pizza and nachos, baked cupcakes and whipped up dips.

Students in the archeology class took a field trip and learned how to excavate artifacts.

The camp allows students to get a taste of courses offered at the Frederick County Career and Technology center, said instructor Robin Browner.

The camp costs $150 for one child or $280 for two students. Families pay a little more if they need transportation.

Fees cover supplies, instructors and other expenses.

"It is entirely self-supporting," Browner said.

With about 50 fewer students enrolling in the program this year, staff at the Career and Technology Center had to make some changes to the program. They reduced the number of classes from the camp's typical 35 to 27. Because of low enrollment numbers in masonry, carpentry and electrical classes, staff decided to fuse the classes into a general building trade class, Browner said.

But that did not seem to be a problem for Bryce Zimmerman, a rising eighth-grader at Walkersville Middle School.

Bryce and other students in the class cut wood, hammered nails and prepared walls for a garage. "I like building things and I thought this class could be interesting," Bryce said.

Bryce's mother, Karen Zimmerman, said she believes the career camp is worth the money. Zimmerman's oldest son also came to the career camp to take welding classes and that inspired him to attend the career center in high school.

"Bryce is my third child to go through the camp," she said. "They get exposed to a lot of things that they may not get exposed to otherwise."

E-mail Margarita Raycheva at mraycheva@gazette.net.