Summer is just around the corner, and as kids are free from their school-related stresses and planning their indoor escapades sitting in front of a computer screen, parents are wondering what they can do to get their kids physically active and socially engaged. Often parents and kids entertain the idea of sleep away camps, sometimes having a child far from home isn’t the best option. But there are, however, day camps – camps that, as their name suggests, occur during the day. Kids are dropped off in the morning at a specified location, take part in many activities, and then return home just in time for supper. It’s the best of both worlds – the child gets the irreplaceable experience of summer camp while parents retain their peace of mind.
Here are the top 10 benefits of sending your kids to day camps:
- Builds leadership skills – Day camps and summer camps offer many character-building exercises on a daily basis. While the child may not see activities they do as necessarily promoting leadership ability, children learn to work with others and assert leadership roles, promoting assertiveness and self-confidence.
- Promotes social interaction – Children who attend day and summer camps have the opportunity to form friendships with other children, often children that may not attend their school. Because summer camps attract kids from many different cities and states, children learn to interact with people they may not be familiar with, providing them with valuable social skills while broadening their worldview. This will enable your child to be more open-minded and accepting of many different types of people, cultures and opinions.
- Champions resilience – Day camps provide children with new challenges and obstacles – all of which the children can overcome with enough hard work and persistence. Because of challenges the child are presented, they develop a resilient nature, fostering their critical thinking skills and motivational drive to solve a problem that’s been presented to them. While the children may not always succeed in winning a challenge of a competition, these setbacks teach them endurance and enable them to make improvements for future challenges.
- Builds self-esteem – With the child often engaged with their peers and challenges, the child develops positive self-esteem, ultimately building their confidence levels. The exercises the children perform are designed to encourage creative thinking and problem solving and the most camps value open discussion of ideas and opinions. With the genuine thoughts of their newfound friends and camp counselors, the kids gain confidence in their ability to be away from parents and friends and in solving problems.
- Acquire life-long skills – Children that attend summer camps are able to learn how to live and be self-sufficient. Time away from parents and other family members will assure children that they can thrive on their own. Some of the skills they learn include teamwork and compromise, responsibility, respect, integrity, and critical thinking.
- New experiences – Kids enrolled in summer and day camps get to experience many more activities than those who do not go to camp. Summer camps are designed to keep your child entertained and involved during the day, therefore they have a wide variety of activities planned. From sports and exercise, to reading and arts and crafts; your child will get to experience things they have never had the chance to do.
- Learn new hobbies – Because of the vast variety of activities done at summer camp, kids will pick up new hobbies and extend their skills and abilities. Finding new hobbies can lead to honing those skills into talents, giving the child a lifelong love and passion for something they discovered at summer camp. Even if the child doesn’t develop a particular passion for summer camp crafts or sports, knowledge of these hobbies will make them well-rounded individuals due to their exposure of many different hobbies.
- Exercise – Children spend most of their time during the school year indoors. For about six hours a day, they are seated at desks and told not to fidget, not to run, and to stay in line. Children are very energetic and those hours of sitting and complying to self-restraint rules penning up their energy, and by summer they are more than ready to sprint with the butterflies. Summer camps cater specifically to promoting physical activity in children. Featuring a multitude of outdoor activities, including obstacle courses and team sports play, summer camp will definitely meet your child’s energy levels and maybe even boost them! Your child have loads of fun running, hiking and swimming, but you get the peace of mind knowing they’re on their way to a healthy lifestyle.
- Connection to Nature – Summer camps focus many of their activities in the outdoors. This is especially important for those who live in big cities and don’t have firsthand access to the beautiful view nature provides. Spending time outdoors, regardless of age, has proven to be a great stress reliever, improve academic performance, and promote sociability. and is a wonderful outlet for children of all ages.
- Unplugs technology- Summer camp gives children the opportunity to put down their smartphones and video games and enjoy the world around them. Away from the fantasy distraction of modern technology, kids gain practical skills and teaches them to be self-reliant and to not become too dependent on technology.