Dance?   Drama?   Sports?   Science?   Spanish or French?

Oh, what camp do I choose?

When I was a kid, a summer camp was a “sleep away” camp with the YMCA or the church for a week or two.   And then there were swimming lessons and maybe the craft wagon came to the local park. Today, for my own children age 6 and 8, I have a stack of brochures offering “day camp” experiences ranging from “horse camp” to “web site construction camp”. This is wonderful that so many options are available but now it is time to do some thoughtful work as to what do I send my child to a camp for?

I have spoken to more than one parent who was excited to find a camp that was both fun and educational.   This is the summer, after all! Kids should experience some of that old fashioned camp stuff we knew – games, songs, trips, camaraderie, discoveries, crafts, a place where you learned some things for the first time and you left with a profound feeling. I think a memory of a wonderful experience is as important as a list of new skills because kids mostly remember how we make them feel.   But as parents, we are always considering what is best for our kids, too. So the best kind of camp for me is one that does both of these things, is fun and educational.

Savoir Faire Language Institute, is very excited to offer once again a huge variety of experiences that fit my criteria of fun and educational. Still going strong are the, French, Spanish and Italian Language Immersion Camps (by the way, 1 week sessions are now offered), which expose kids to French or Spanish or Italian through cultural cooking, active games, field trips to the beach and park, cultural crafts and hands-on participation. Here is the opportunity to let you child dabble in languages before he/she reaches high school!!

Again, for me, I want my kids to have a fabulous time at a camp. I want them to leave with the kind of memory that I have from camps, an, “I remember when I …” kind of experience. I want the experience to maybe shape my kids in some way. A language and cultural camp that gives my kids a positive attitude toward learning a foreign language and an appreciation for another culture meets the bill. We can’t let our kids ride their bikes from dawn to dusk like we did in the summer; the world is a different place in lots of ways.  

Learning a foreign language used to be an exotic endeavor, but now it is a necessity!

Which ever camp you choose with/for your children this summer, I don’t think you can go wrong considering what memories you are creating for them as well as what skills they will acquire.