Top 10 Reasons Camp is Great for Kids

If you’ve been to camp, you’re not surprised when you hear about the benefits of summer camp. Experiencing life at camp yourself as a child, you know the profound positive effects that still matter to you as an adult, and you also know that you want the same thing for your own kids.

But if you didn’t go to camp as a child, you may not realize just how good the experience is for children. You may not know why so many parents are committed to sending their kids to camp. So while we have talked about most of these before, here is a list of the most important reasons to send your kids to camp.

At camp, children:

10. Spend their day being physically active – As children spend so much time these days inside and mostly sitting down, camp provides a wonderful opportunity to move. Running, swimming, jumping, hiking, climbing! Camp is action!

9. Experience success and become more confident – Camp helps children build self-confidence and self-esteem by removing the kind of academic, athletic and social competition that shapes their lives at school. With its non-competitive activities and diverse opportunities to succeed, camp life is a real boost for young people. There’s accomplishment every day. Camp teaches kids that they can.

8. Gain resiliency – The kind of encouragement and nurture kids receive at camp makes it a great environment to endure setbacks, try new (and thereby maybe a little frightening) things, and see that improvement comes when you give something another try. Camp helps conquer fears.

7. Unplug from technology – When kids take a break from TV, cell phones, and the Internet, they rediscover their creative powers and engage the real world— real people, real activities, and real emotions. They realize, there’s always plenty to do. Camp is real!

6. Develop life-long skills – Camps provide the right instruction, equipment and facilities for kids to enhance their sports abilities, their artistic talents, and their adventure skills. The sheer variety of activities offered at camp, makes it easy for kids to discover and develop what they like to do. Camp expands every child’s abilities.

5. Grow more independent – Camp is the perfect place for kids to practice making decisions for themselves without parents and teachers guiding every move. Managing their daily choices in the safe, caring environment of camp, children welcome this as a freedom to blossom in new directions. Camp helps kids develop who they are.

4. Have free time for unstructured play – Free from the overly-structured, overly-scheduled routines of home and school, life at camp gives children much needed free time to just play. Camp is a slice of carefree living where kids can relax, laugh, and be silly all day long. At camp we play!

3. Learn social skills – Coming to camp means joining a close-knit community where everyone must agree to cooperate and respect each other. When they live in a cabin with others, kids share chores, resolve disagreements, and see firsthand the importance of sincere communication. Camp builds teamwork.

2. Reconnect with nature – Camp is a wonderful antidote to “nature deficit disorder,” to the narrow experience of modern indoor life. Outdoor experience enriches kid’s perception of the world and supports healthy child development. Camp get kids back outside.

1. Make true friends – Camp is the place where kids make their very best friends. Free from the social expectations pressuring them at school, camp encourages kids to relax and make friends easily. All the fun at camp draws everyone together— singing, laughing, talking, playing, doing almost everything together. Everyday, camp creates friendships.

See? Camp is great.

What's an Accredited Camp?

What does it mean to be an “accredited summer camp?”

For summer camps, there is a national organization of camp professionals dedicated to identifying and standardizing the most important knowledge, experience and practices of quality camp programs. It’s called the American Camp Association (ACA). For almost 100 years, the ACA has gathered and refined what it considers to be the “best practices” and has defined almost 300 industry-accepted and government-recognized standards for summer camps.

For a summer camp to be “ACA accredited,” like Rockbrook, it means that camp is abiding by the policies, procedures and practices accepted by the best camps in the country. It means that camp has agreed to regular on-site inspections and professional reviews. And for parents, it means you can feel more confident that the camp is taking the best possible care of your child.  Visit the Parents Section of the ACA website to learn more (highly recommended!).

With the American Camp Association’s long history, body of camp related knowledge, and level of professionalism, Rockbrook is proud to be an ACA accredited summer camp.

Children Learning at Camp

Cory Doctorow wrote a nice post reminding us of the classic book about children and learning by John Holt, “How Children Learn” (originally published in 1967).  The book, which has been revised and reprinted, can still be found on many education course reading lists because it makes a very important point teachers and parents easily and often forget.  His basic claim is that children are natural learners, and that instead of always forcing them to adhere to a generalized curriculum, they should be encouraged to follow their curiosity, engage what they are passionate about, expand their perception and awareness, and experiment with the world around them.  For adults, this means being less of a tyrant (“You have to…”) and more of a partner along for the adventure of growing up.  Holt has observed this kind of adult coercion in the realm of learning to be often more counterproductive than not.  Of course, parents and teachers need to provide some guidance at times and encourage or facilitate certain educational activities (or social behaviors!), but any habit of rigidly adhering to particular learning styles, contexts, or subjects may shape children to the detriment of their strengths and talents.

What does this have to do with camp?  If most of the year is comprised of adults telling children what to do, what study, what to learn —and you have to agree it is— then having a break from that in the summer is incredibly important and valuable.  After all, that’s what camp provides.  Campers arrive at camp and decide for themselves (without mom, dad, or teacher) which activities to take and how they will spend their time at camp.  With some guidance from the counselors, they make their own experience, explore their own interests, build their own understandings.  The great feelings that come with this freedom is certainly one reason girls love their camp experience.

Camp is so meaningful for them because they are active participants in making it meaningful.

Empowering Kids through Camp

Back in July, Nancy Gibbs wrote a short article in Time Magazine called “The Meaning of Summer Camp.” [link]  There’s a lot she discusses, but the article’s tagline gets to the heart of it: “It used to be about acquiring survival skills. Now it’s about the social skills that need work.”  Parents used to send their kids to summer camp to toughen up a bit, to learn practical outdoor skills.  Being away from the “comforts of home” and away from parents’ assistance, made this possible.  Now, Gibbs observes, camp is a place for kids to “unplug” and explore life without cellphones, text messaging, and their Facebook accounts. In other words, camp is still a place to break from the familiar, and when faced with new challenges, grow in new ways. Gibbs identifies the social benefits (learning to share, communicate, cooperate and so forth) that follow, but we should add physical (like becoming a stronger swimmer), emotional (like the joy of being completely silly), and psychological (like becoming more confident and self-assured) benefits as well.

Sometimes it’s hard to see this, but all these benefits of camp, not to mention how fun it is, arise because camp is so different from life at home and at school.  Preserving that difference is one of the main reasons Rockbrook doesn’t allow cellphones, computers, Internet access, electronic games, and other forms of technology that tether kids to what they have at home.  It’s one reason why sneaking a cellphone into camp is a terrible idea.  While it may make you feel better, it will dilute, if not destroy, what summer camp is all about.

Camp is a place to acquire new skills and grow up a little while having a great time with your friends.  It works because it’s not the same as home, and that’s a good thing.