Every year, millions of parents send their child off to summer camp in order to help make the most of the time they have out of school, and ensure that parents are not run ragged dealing with childcare issues 24/7 for ten to twelve weeks until the new fall semester starts.
Summer camp has for many years been a popular and affordable option for childcare and fun for the kids, but a whole new generation of summer camps has been developing recently which offer more options than ever before. Every parent wants their child to have a great camping experience. Doing research and matching the right kind of camp to your children can make all the difference between delight and disaster. Let’s start with a look at the benefits of sending your child to summer camp.
There are many reasons to send your child to summer camp. The first is a practical one – unless you are a teacher yourself, you will not usually have as long a summer vacation as your children will. If you are not a stay-at-home parent and can’t work from home regularly, your children will need to be supervised during what would normally be school hours until you can get home to care for them. You can take some vacation days to coincide with them being out of school so you can spend quality time with them, but otherwise they will need to be supervised, kept entertained, and fed. A summer camp can offer all of these benefits, and more.
Another key benefit of sending your child to camp is the social skills they will learn mixing with new people. You might send them to the same camp as their siblings and perhaps even friends and neighbors, in which case they will spend time with people they like, and meet more. If they are going on their own, they will learn a whole new set of social skills.
This is particularly true in relation to sleepaway camp. Depending on the age of the children and the type of camp, they might stay for two weeks or the entire summer. Children at day and sleepaway camps who show themselves to be capable and mature for several years in a row can also be permitted to attend a counsellor in training (CIT) program when they are old enough. The compensation for this might range from a deeply discounted fee for the whole summer, to going for free, or even getting paid. It all depends on your child’s age (usually teens) and the type of camp – for example, YMCA versus private camps.
Depending on the camp you choose, your children will be able to access facilities that they might not otherwise be able to enjoy throughout the summer. The most obvious is a swimming pool, but it might also include tennis courts, horseback riding, arts and crafts such as pottery or drawing, or academic camps that will help them improve their skills in a certain subject, or get them ready for college.
Children are able to engage in fun activities all day at camp, and parents have the peace of mind of knowing where their child is and that they are being supervised, not at home alone (for older kids) or getting into trouble with their friends. Some camps also offer early morning drop-off and late pick-up for an additional fee, which may sound like a lot per week until you consider how much you would have to pay for a childminder for a couple of hours just to sit with them – let alone do all sorts of fun activities with them.