General

What Parents Want to Know that Camp Counselors Should Know

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. Each summer, parents across the country take a leap of faith by sending their child off to summer camp, thus entrusting their health and safety to people they may not even know. This new, and timely, article from the May/June edition of Camping Magazine discusses the camp counselor’s role as a summer “parent” – or in loco parentis.

Lessons on Leadership Embedded in Summer Camp Experience

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. CCSC has long believed that the summer camp experience offers significant opportunities to help children and young adults learn leadership skills that transfer well into other settings, such as school and athletics. With our teen population in particular, we are quite intentional about demonstrating and encouraging leadership. The new edition of Camping Magazine from the American Camp Association contains a feature article, Indifferent Spectators, on leadership that was co-written by three of our campers.

Cyberbullying and Camp’s Role in Helping Girls Disengage from the Online World

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. In this space, we have posted a number of articles discussing the all-important issue of bullying. As the summer camp season approaches, now is a good time to start thinking about how best to help children disconnect from social media. In Cyberbullying and Camp’s Role in Helping Girls Disengage from the Online World, author Rachel Simmons discusses how girls in particular use the interned to engage in bullying behaviors and how camp can help them to stop.

Mistakes Improve Children’s Learning

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. Kids tell us that camp is a place where they can “be themselves” without fear of failure or ridicule by adults or peers. That is certainly the type of environment – and community – we strive to create each summer. And that’s a good thing, because we now have a growing body of research and practice that suggests making mistakes is an essential component of learning for children. Some of that work is discussed in Mistakes Improve Children’s Learning by Marilyn Price-Mitchell in Psychology Today.

Camp Builds Self-Esteem and Confidence in Kids

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. While we’ve known anecdotally for generations that summer camp helps kids to feel better about themselves and more confident with others, recent research from the American Camp Association proves it! Indeed, ACA REPORT- Directions: Youth Development Outcomes of the Camp Experience lists self-esteem and confidence among five benefits young people receive from time at camp. The others are: social skills and making friends independence and leadership qualities willingness to try and adventurousness spiritual grwoth, especially at camps focused on spirituality. Of course, camp is only part of the answer. There are many things parents can do to help with their child’s self-esteem and level of confidence. An article from KidsHealth, Raising Confident Kids, discusses some of them.

Teaching Good Manners Still Matters

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. One of the goals of the summer camp experience is to help children to live more independently and develop social skills. Part of that process, just like at home, is internalizing values and manners – something many parents struggle to instill in their offspring. In Raise a Kid Who Gets Invited Back, Teri Cetinna tackles this subject for Parenting.com.

Who Are You Calling a Mama’s Boy?

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. Father-son relationships are often discussed and debated. Yet, arguably, one of the most potent relationships a growing boy will have is with his mother. Those relationships are not always easily understood or may be mis-perceived. Kate Stone Lombardi discusses this topic in a Wall Street Journal article, Who Are You Calling a Mama’s Boy?

The Joys of Doing Nothing

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. At last month’s American Camp Association conference in Atlanta, GA there was continued discussion about new evidence supporting unstructured (not the same as unsupervised) play among children, including at summer camp! The Joys of Doing Nothing, on Scholastic.com outlines some of what we know.

Keys to Quality Youth Development

Note to Readers: This blog from Cape Cod Sea Camps, a traditional New England summer camp and premier provider of summer education opportunities for children and young adults, is offered as a resource on youth development for families. Positive youth development is the name of the game. In “Keys to Quality Youth Development,” the University of Michigan point to the work of Gisela Konopka and Karen Pittman in identifying eight critical elements essential to such development. We think you’ll recognize a lot of them from camp!

Summer Camps Develop Competencies in the 3 Cs

Skills for the 21st Century – Daniella Garran Now, more than ever, America’s youth is being treated as adults-in-training rather than as children and teenagers. Parents are rightly concerned about preparing their children for college and a career but often forget to let their children enjoy childhood. In today’s schools, teachers are forced to focus on content mastery and standardized tests rather than on fostering creativity and curiosity among their students. However, being able to solve Calculus problems, recite the Preamble to the Constitution and achieve high standardized test scores does not necessarily mean that one is prepared socially, emotionally, or even intellectually for what lies ahead. Enter summer camps. READ MORE