Summer.
A time that children look forward to and a time that many parents have mixed feelings about. Anxious to have their children at home for a couple of months, some parents still struggle with what they will do to make sure that their children are safe, happy, and occupied. And for all the talk about children and teenagers needing more down time, the fact of the matter is if you are a working parent too much down time for your children can mean trouble.
In generations past, when many mothers were always home instead of working away from the house, summers could mean something different. Kids could wander the neighborhood, bike to the public swimming pool, and sleep under the stars on the cooler evenings. Today, however, things are a little more complicated. Not all neighborhoods are made for wandering, not all homes have a public pool close enough to bike ride to, and not everyone has a backyard where the stars are even visible. For parents who both work full time or for students who are trying to stay competitive in their school activities and teams, summer has become a time for practices, workshops, and summer camps for kids.
What Are Your Children Doing This Summer?
Although some families still try to find time in the summer for family reunions and family vacations, many other families try to schedule a summer full of summer day camps and week long events. While the oldest high school students may pend their summers on college campuses trying to see if an East coast school is a good fit, summer camp activities for children as young as preschool provide lessons in acting, swimming, gymnastics, and music. Consider some of the ways that summer camps for kids can benefit your children during their summer months away from school.
- Fiddle Camp. Billed as nothing but fun, some Suzuki violin students take a break from the classical pieces and memorize fiddle tunes for a week every summer. Complete with a end of week celebration that includes a hotdog roast and a performance at a retirement center, these musically inclined students learn how to make their basses sound like trains and their violins sound like fiddles. With an emphasis on scales and theory part of the day, the progressively difficult play list started with Old MacDonald and finishes with Ashokan Farewell, even the youngest of fiddlers can join in with animal sounds and yee-haws!
- Intensive High School Writing Camp. Summer camps for kids take on a more mature theme when students decide to pursue their interest in writing. Although high school classrooms during the school year do not always have time to linger on likes of script writing, horror writing, and poetry, high school writing camps give students a chance to practice their craft away from the ink of a red pen. Understanding the two ways to create suspense, students take a stab at horror stories but also have the opportunity to try slam poetry. Without the threat of a five paragraph essay prompt to stifle their creativity, high school writing camps give students the chance to write a variety of genres for a variety of audiences.
- Montessori Day Camp. You may not be able to afford an expensive private Montessori environment during the school year, but that does not mean that you cannot take advantage of this proven philosophy in the summer. With exciting science experiments, hands on math activities, and time to explore important pieces of cultural history, Montessori summer camps for kids can help students reignite their passion for learning. In mixed age groups and with schedules dictated by a student’s interest these academic camps make learning seem like a great way to spend the summer.
- Sports Camps. In a nation where fewer than 5% of adults participate in 30 minutes of physical activity a day, sports camps get kids of all ages in the habit of staying active. And in a time only one in three adults receive the recommended amount of physical activity each week, gymnastics, swimming, and baseball and softball skills are great habits to get started.
With more than 12,000 day and resident camps in the U.S., parents should be able to find something that is a good match.