Guest Post: The Importance of Learning Outcomes When Choosing a Summer Camp
This is a guest post from the team over at Camp Doodles. Camp Doodles has announced a new program this summer for 3 - 4 year olds at their new location! It's the same great Doodles themes and activities, just crafted for younger campers.
Summer is just around the corner and it’s time to get excited about summer camp! We sure are thrilled to share our program with our campers and watch as they blossom during camp. With the focus in education shifting to teaching children key 21st century skills, it is increasingly important to give our children a solid foundation for learning. School does a great job of teaching academics, but key soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity are often missed.
That is where summer camp comes in. Inherently experiential and hands-on, camp offers children the opportunity to develop critical cognitive, social and emotional skills while having fun in a loving and supportive environment. But with so many programs offered these days, one of the most common questions we receive from parents is “how do I know if this is the right camp for my child?” Sport camps, music camps, computer coding camps, cooking camps – there are so many choices!
When choosing a camp, it is important to consider your child’s personality and interests, which most parents do automatically. But we always stress the importance of a camp’s learning outcomes as well. What are the goals of this camp’s program? Is there an intentionally designed curriculum or is it just a bunch of random games and activities? Are the activities child-directed or staff-directed? Does the staff create a loving and supportive environment that encourages children to try new things, develop grit when faced with new challenges, and help them make new friends? Is the staff trained to teach your child’s age group?
Camp can be a very memorable experience for children. Ask most adults who went to camp as a child and they can usually recall memories as if they happened yesterday. If they attended a high quality program, then their experiences were usually positive and a core part of their childhood. But it wasn't things like the activity studios that created the fondest memories. They remember their counselors by name, and thought they walked on water. They remember the friends they made. They remember getting their hands dirty. They remember having a truly unique experience!
And if the curriculum was strong, they learned a lot in the process, whether they knew it or not. As young children are very impressionable, having loving, supportive and well-trained counselors is the key to creating these memories. Counselors are mentors, teachers and friends. Their role is to scaffold children’s learning but not simply dictate instruction. Their ultimate goal should be to create “disrupting moments” where a child will look back when they are older and say “that was the moment.”
At Camp Doodles, our goal is simple: to inspire children’s imaginations each day – all summer long. We believe children learn best through direct experience and everyone does this in their own way. That is why our activities are purposely designed to be open-ended to allow each child to develop their creativity, problem solving, and social skills at their own pace. Our project-based curriculum is built around an imaginative theme each week and tailored specifically for each age group. We work hard to ensure that each child leaves more curious, more self-confident and more ready for the upcoming school year than when they first came to camp.
So don’t let the prospect of choosing a camp be overwhelming. Speak to the camp directors directly. Ask the tough questions. And very soon, you will find a camp that feels intuitively right for your family.
Here’s to a great summer!