Summer camp is much more than just summer camp activities and not showering quite as much as you’re supposed to.
It’s also one of the best ways that parents can prepare their kids for the adult world (while still making sure they have a great time).
Here are seven reasons why camp gets kids to understand, interact, and engage with the world around them.
1. Summer camp activities promote teamwork
Camp is all about teamwork. Whether part of an overt effort to promote teamwork with summer camp activities like ropes courses or team sports to the more subtle teamwork built by living communally, camp fosters teamwork in a multitude of ways.
Which is important.
In so many pursuits as we grow up, teamwork takes a backseat to individual achievement. Getting into college, for example, is an entirely solo project, or landing your first job.
However, as anyone who’s ever actually held a job can attest to, in the professional world, teamwork is paramount to success.
Camp teaches those skills early.
2. Leadership
Of course, every good team needs a good leader.
Camp is superb at teaching leadership.
First, it’s just a matter of opportunity. From leading a group of three to set up a tent quickly to leading a cabin of 10, there are lots of leadership opportunities for kids.
Since being a leader takes practice, the more you do it the better you get. Thus, kids who go to camp are likely to be better leaders in the future.
Second, at camp, you end up relying on a team a lot. So you learn how to ease off and let them do what they need to do – instead of micro-managing everything.
Third, as a leader you have to not only lead, but persuade others to follow. Camp provides a safe and secure environment for kids to hone their persuasion skills.
After all, if you can’t bring people along, it’s a lot harder to lead them to do what you want.
Finally, our camps all work to foster leadership in an active way, so it’s not a matter of the loudest or the most confident being a leader.
For us, it’s about every child learning how to lead in a safe and positive environment – an opportunity unique to summer camps.
3. Decision making
It’s amazing how few decisions kids actually make on their own today.
Camp provides a safe environment for children to:
- Make decisions
- Commit to those decisions
- Accept consequences of decision making
We tend to forget as adults that these skills actually need to be cultivated and learned. Camp gives kids the chance to do that.
In particular, summer camp provides the environment to help kids decide what to do when things are tough, and when there’s no clear right or wrong answer to a question (you can see how useful that would be).
What’s more, camps throughout the US focus heavily on building a strong moral compass, to help kids not only with pragmatic decision making but also give them the tools to grapple with moral questions and make the right decision when it matters most.
4. Resilience
Resilience is the ability to absorb a setback and keep trying to achieve your goal.
In short, it’s the ability to not give up at the first hurdle.
The building blocks of resilience are all skills that are learned at camp:
- Empathy and connection
- Self-care: teaching kids to look after themselves physically and emotionally
- Step-by-step progress to a goal
- Perspective and hopefulness – things will likely get better
- Change and challenges are part of life
These sorts of mindsets develop naturally through summer camp activities. A crafts project like making a mug in pottery teaches step-by-step progress. Being more independent teaches self-care. Watching others struggle, achieve, succeed and fail reinforce empathy and connection.
5. Openness
Naturally, being empathetic ties in with being open to the world around you.
Openness is about being willing to push yourself outside your comfort zone and try something new.
Whether you’re starting a new job, meeting new people, tasting new food or traveling to a new country, an open and positive outlook will enhance your experience and your life.
And summer camp helps to foster this.
Trying a new summer camp activity, pushing yourself to a higher diving board, or putting yourself out there in camp performances all help teach kids the confidence, determination, and courage to try something new.
6. Camp makes you a good roommate
Perhaps less important than other character building aspects of camp, the fact is that kids today are likely to live with roommates at least once (and probably a lot more often than that).
The communal living aspect of camp teaches you to be good at it, and is especially important for an only child.
Respecting other people’s habits, their space, and their own unique ebbs and flows of their mood help facilitate a happy household.
These skills are first learned at camp and will stick with kids both consciously and subconsciously for their whole lives.
7. Physical fitness outside
Finally, camp promotes physical fitness and combats nature deficit disorder, an increasingly serious problem for screen-dependent children. Many camps ban or heavily reduce technology for the campers so they’re more fully immersed in the camp experience, the outdoors, and the world around them.
The result of that and the very nature of summer camp activities mean that kids get more hours of physical fitness over the summer then they might get all year.
But it’s not only the short term fitness gains that matter. For many kids, camp is where they learn how good it feels to be physically active and fit, where they learn the importance of exposure to nature and the outdoors, and where they fall in love with activities that will keep them healthy their whole lives.
Wrap up
There you have it. Seven ways that camp is only a s’more filled summer, but a hugely beneficial experience for children where they learn skills and develop the character that’s going to help them throughout their lives.
Whether it’s learning how to lead and work as a team to just being a great roommate in college, we think every child takes away from camp something that sticks with them forever.
Interested in summer camps? Get in touch and we’ll find the summer camp for you!