Essay on Summer Camp

Camps during vacations

In India, schools shut down for a brief period of time during the winter season and also for a couple of months when the temperatures start rising during the summer months.

When it’s a long holiday, people plan vacations for their children, a trip to the relative’s places, visiting the grandparents and last but not the least, a summer camp to keep them engaged for the two months that the school is going to remain shut for.

Parents take children out for vacations, allow them to bond with their grandparents, but after a while it becomes difficult for parents to manage the kids at home. Usually the summer holidays extend for almost more than two months and it becomes difficult for parents to keep an eye on their children. Also, if children are allowed to focus and stay engaged with some activity, they begin to develop new interests and hobbies.

Else it leads to boredom and wasting two months without any productivity is a big loss for the children. Time once wasted can never be brought back again. When summer begins around the months of April – May, children enter vacation mood and begin rejoicing at the sight of holidays.

Summer camps allow children to have fun during their vacation. Summer camps have a lot of variety in them. Camps are organized for singing, dancing, drawing, art skills, fun themes, craft works, musical instrument classes, sports activities, trekking, hiking, outdoor activities, indoor games, computer classes etc.

There are a whole lot of activities happening during the months of April – may that children love to attend. These summer camps charge according to the activities they indulge students in and in turn students get a lot of exposure and learning from their classes.

It is a bridging between the previous school term and the next higher academic term. It allows students to feel relaxed and refreshed, without having to worry about the pressure of exams and tests at summer camps. At the same time, it also allows students to showcase their skills and learn something new from these camps.

Skilled Trainers

Usually experts at their fields are called in to teach at summer camps. If there are outdoor activities, then a sportsperson will be hired to train the students on the required activities.

The students participate on a daily basis, for a fixed number of hours after which they can g back home and make use of the holiday time at home for other purposes.

Nowadays, summer camps are on a rise in the city every street and every corner announces its summer classes as soon as schools down the shutters for about two months. Students can also keep themselves engaged and find themselves busy in an activity of their choice instead of dwindling away time without doing anything.

Need for Summer Camps

In today’s cut throat competition, learning outside the fixed perimeter of school knowledge is a must and parents make sure to do their best. Sticking to mere book knowledge drawn from school syllabus is a thing of the past. These days, students need to learn much more than just book knowledge.

They have to really fill themselves with lot of extra knowledge that help them keep abreast with latest happenings in the world and allow them to have a broad vision of the current society. A place where students can easily build their skills and learn new things without the burden of assessments is in these summer camps.

Summer camps don’t come with the baggage of examinations. Their main idea is to let children have fun during their non-learning days, yet teach them valuable lessons for life.

Different Levels

Summer classes are arranged in different categories for different levels of age groups. The smaller children, mainly the kindergarten kids have summer classes arranged all over the cities at every nook and corner.

This is the age where children love outdoor activities, like to scribble and scratch, jump, make merry, sing their own tunes and dance to their own beats. So summer camps for such age groups are arranged in such a manner so as to cater to the changing moods and behaviors of small children.

We can find that small kids don’t sit with a single activity for a long duration. Suppose they were drawing and they see something interesting in the crafts’ section, then immediately they shift focus to the craft section and leave behind their drawing activity.

So, summer camps organized for this age group, in particular should keep in mind the changing behavior of toddlers and arrange activities likewise.

In the next level, summer camps are organized for the pre-primary school children. These children have learning abilities more than kindergarten children but less than primary school children. Their interests vary accordingly.

They engage themselves in a certain activity for some time until they are able to finish the task and do not get carried away just by a mere change of activity in the neighborhood. They take care to complete a given task before passing on to the next one.

These students can be taught drawing, sketching, basics of music, dance steps and many more. These children can be started with something new and extra that fits their areas of interest.

Slowly, when they build interest towards a particular area, they can be guided further, which will allow them to explore more themselves and develop further interest towards the chosen field.

When it comes to primary and high school children, they are totally different. Primary school children learn new things at a faster pace in school. Hence their learning abilities and areas of interests vary accordingly. The way they view the world is totally different from those of their juniors.

They develop specific inclination towards a particular area and try to do them as often as possible in the form of a hobby. Suppose a child is interested in music, at this stage, the child is able to recognize his interest in music and hence takes a lot of interest in learning new things in music.

When we talk of high school children, we are discussing about mature children who understand the world around them. They have crossed the phase of childhood memories and they would be deciding in their next career moves. So a summer camp in outdoor games helps them burn all the energy and makes them ready for their next steps.

High school children should be prepared to take on the students of college life and hence they should be taught something at a higher level, to make them good at life skills and improve their career bent of mind.

Once students pass out of high school, they have lot of options to spend their holidays. Enrolling in good summer camps will now focus more on boosting their career aspects and letting them know about various courses they can pursue, higher learning and education, certificate courses etc.

Life Skills and Fun Learning

Summer camps allow children to interact with other children who may be known or unknown. It creates a happy environment for children who start putting their focus in little things that amuse them. Little interests in little things occupy their minds and create inquisitiveness in them.

They become more curious about the world around them and try to explore new things in sight. They begin to know about new machines, plants, animals, birds, hear and sense new colors, lights, music etc and make their minds happy.

Children create a happy environment at home as well when their learning at these summer camps channelizes their energies into something useful rather than dwindling away time unnecessarily.

Children would be taught good habits and manners which will allow them to respect their teachers at schools and in the process they learn the right way to conduct themselves. Children become more responsible when they are enrolled on such activities as they become aware of the hundreds of things that they are capable of doing.

Children are gifted with unique talents of their own. Parents must recognize the talents in their children and allow them to blossom from their buds by enrolling them to beautiful summer camps to give them afresh breath of air, away from the pressures of everyday rote learning.

They tend to learn faster and more when they are free of any tensions and pressures. They develop more interest when they are engaged in an environment that provides fun learning. Summer camps are the best way to bring out the hidden talents in children.