Summer and Winter Camps - Learning Beyond the Book
Summer and winter camps in Europe: For Explorer families, it represents carefree days of swimming, skiing, playing sports, singing songs, and reveling in freedom from the demands of the school year. Camp means no homework, no studying, and no teachers.
But significant learning is still taking place at summer and winter camps — even if the campers don’t necessarily realize it.
Summer and Winter Learning (Without the Books)
All those classic camp dynamics — being away from home and parents, making new friends, being part of a team, and trying new things — are building blocks to crucial social-emotional skills.
Social-emotional learning (SEL) can include a variety of practices, but most experts agree that a child with high SEL skills is successful in five core areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. These skills are believed to be central to success in school and in professional life beyond, but schools don’t always have the time or capacities to teach them explicitly. Obligations to complete curriculum and boost student achievement often make it difficult for teachers to prioritize community building, goal-setting, or problem solving in their classrooms.
A 2005 study of 80 camps by the American Camp Association (ACA) found significant growth in children’s social-emotional skills after a session of summer camp. Camp staff, parents, and children reported increases in children’s self-esteem, independence, leadership, friendship skills, social comfort, and values and decision-making skills, from the beginning to the end of a session. Interestingly enough, Explorer families report the same growth.
What a Good Explorer Camp Experience Looks Like
It’s not just the new environment and flexible schedule that builds kids’ social-emotional skills. Explorer Camps has an intentional focus on social-emotional learning. We focus on building our values every day: Respect. Responsibilty. Honesty. Caring. Adventurous. And train staff to coach kids on becoming more independent, socially aware, and reflective.
In particular, Explorer summer and winter camps foster relationship skills and social awareness by:
- Introducing children to an entirely new group of peers. Summer and winter camps may be the first time children have spent substantial time with people whose background — home, race, or religion — is different from their own.
- Setting up opportunities for children to find their own friends. Each session is begun with icebreakers and a focus on connecting children to each other. These activities give campers explicit opportunities to get to know each other, allowing them to figure out who they want to become better friends with.
- Creating a space where silliness is accepted, and bullying is not. Without the need to plunge into academic content, camps have time to use the beginning of a session to prioritize group norms. Counselors make it very clear that bullying and teasing are not acceptable. At the same time, camps can encourage songs, jokes, and general silliness that allow campers to relax and be themselves.
- Electronic free. At Explorer Camps in Europe there is NO access to many technology for the entire length of the camps. For many campers, this means it’s the first time they’ve made friends without the help of Instagram or Snapchat, and they learn how to navigate social cues to build and maintain friendships in “real life.”
- Modeling teamwork and sportsmanship. During staff training, our summer and winter camp program stresses the importance of adults demonstrating cooperation and friendship to their campers. When campers are surrounded by positive role models — particularly role models closer to their own age than teachers are — they learn how to get along with peers who may be different from them.
Summer and winter camps also nurture self-awareness, self-management, and responsible decision making by:
- Requiring children to solve day-to-day problems on their own. With limited contact with parents, campers have to learn how to manage their own conflicts, whether it’s a disagreement with a bunkmate or not getting their first-choice activity.
- Presenting activities that are new to everyone. Counselors often purposefully lead games and activities that none of their campers have tried before. Without the fear that some peers will already have a leg-up on lava tag or basket making, children may be more likely to decide to try new things.
- Offering kids the chance to set and accomplish daily goals. The sheer amount of new activities makes it possible for kids to continually set and achieve goals, deepening their understanding of personal limits. One day a camper may be set on reaching the top of the climbing wall, and the next she may be determined to collaborate with her group to create a new song.
- Helping children uncover new skills. Kids who are usually immersed in academics may become aware of new skills that they didn’t know they had. For children who struggle in school, these opportunities can increase self-confidence.
- Providing time for reflection. All Explorer Camps begin or end the day with reflection activities, in which campers can think about the challenges they’ve faced, how they’ve grown, and what they’re excited for. These moments, rare in a typical school day, can develop self-awareness and mindfulness for all kids.
