5 Things To Look for When Choosing a Day Camp for Your Child

Sending your child to a day camp during the summer involves a lot of research. It’s important to have a checklist of items that your child will enjoy in a camp, along with other variables such as safety standards, on-site facilities, and camp counselors that understand – especially for younger children – that attending camp can be an incredibly rewarding yet emotional experience.

That way, you know your child is not only enjoying summer camp, but they are doing so surrounded by experienced professionals that want to create the most engaging atmosphere possible for them. Here is list of five more things to consider when compiling a checklist for your child’s summer camp adventure:

1. Secure environment

The most important item on this list; find a camp where your child’s safety comes first. Schedule a time to view the facilities where the camp will be held, ask questions, and get to know the people that will be responsible for supervising your child. You want a camp that embraces, and even encourages, this as a means of introducing you to their facilities and staff.

2. Breadth of activities and on-site facilities

The camp should offer activities that challenge your child to learn new skills and to introduce them to new things. By offering a variety of features and additional activities, students can try their hand at activities that may not have been offered to them in the past. For instance, at World Academy, our camps offer everything from Brickapalooza and soccer camps, to drama club, swim lessons in our in-ground swimming pool, summer enrichment classes, and even Karate instruction.

3. A blend of physical and cognitive engagement

Sending your child to a camp centered on a single activity can be a wonderful experience for them, but offering unique activities, or activities that they have been reticent to try in the past, can satisfy your child’s natural curiosity and allow them to try something new and exciting.The daily activity list should allow for periods of extended energetic fun, mixed with quieter times to encourage your child to choose a balance of activities that are of personal interest to them.

4. Educational at heart

Look for a camp that offers engaging activities and not just busy ones. Camp should be an informal educational experience, devoted to learning based on fun, play and action to build personal competencies. Whether learning how to play a sport, a musical instrument, or introducing a newfound hobby, camp should engage and educate the whole child and provide essential elements of sound youth development, along with age-appropriate structure and boundaries in which to meet new friends, explore and discover.

5. Convenient schedule

We send our kids to summer camp for several reasons: Mainly to have fun, learn and grow. But another reason is that we have to work. Look for a camp that has a reasonable schedule with flexible pick-up and drop-off times. Thoroughly look over the schedule to make sure there will not be any times or dates that will conflict with your schedule. World Academy’s summer camp offers a convenient pick-up and drop-off times for campers of all ages, from infants through Grade 8, for the full length of a typical work day.  

Most times, a lot of research goes into choosing a summer camp for your child. We hope these five suggestions make that decision process a bit more manageable to ensure your child comes home each day safe, happy, and fulfilled!