Dubai: Tasneem Ajaj, a Jordanian working mother of three kids, is against the idea of letting her children idle away summer months.
She believes it’s crucial for her children to be part of a summer camp where they can use their holiday time constructively to learn something new and socialise with children from different cultures.
Her seven-year-old, Tasneem, acquired greater confidence and self-esteem after attending summer camp last year.
The concept of summer camps has been around for a long time in the UAE which offer parents who are staying on in summer a chance to help their children enjoy various activities that keep them mentally and physically active. Lasting between four weeks to eight, mainly between the months of June and August, summer camps target specific groups of children of different ages with prices ranging from Dh150 daily to above Dh300 weekly and over Dh1,000 monthly.
But how effective are such camps in reaching their objectives?
Gulf News contacted a few camps in Dubai to understand the rationale behind running them.
Dubai Holiday Camp runs separate summer camps for children aged two to 14 every year at schools and nurseries across Dubai. The organisers said they receive roughly 5,000 children a year.
“Kids at camps are able to be themselves in a fun and active environment. We like to offer activities they will enjoy being part of. There is no time for gadgets and apps because they are too busy making friends and having fun,” said Hazel Kemp, sales and marketing manager, Dubai Holiday Camp.
Focusing mainly on physical activities like swimming, climbing, tennis, gymnastics and also manual activities like cooking and painting, the camp, said Kemp, “also tries to teach children how to work as part of a team and also find their own independence away from their parents, in new surroundings.
“Children have spent all year working hard at school. Coming to camp is about having fun and making new friends and memories that will last,” said Kemp.
Master Brain Children Development Centre, another summer camp that engages children in brain exercises along with a bit of muscle exercises echoed a similar sentiment.
Raju Bulchand, owner and manager of the camp, said camps help children escape the digital world and use their brain in natural ways.
“The main thing in today’s world is that if they are at home, the natural tendency is to increase the hours a day on screens, especially in places like Dubai where summer is not conducive to outdoor activities. The two months of summer without structured mental activity can be too long for most children and, therefore, we encourage mentally active camps,” said Bulchand.
Children at their camp are asked to perform yoga and muscle exercises before beginning some mental activities like brain teasers, vocabulary games, spelling games and activities, basic geography questions, handwriting practice, comprehension, colouring and drawing, maths puzzles, and Sudoku, among many.
“It’s important for children to have a brain-active summer,” said Bulchand. “Apart from brain utilisation, we also have manual work activities in arts and crafts.”
Bulchand said the classes are given by their in-house staff, who have been trained in the education sector and have completed special NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) classes to improve their communication and rapport with children.
Aura Training Centre, another summer camp, said its activities are mainly centred around simplifying maths for kids, but they try to limit seats because they believe working with a small group helps the child take home the knowledge and skills.
“Our camps are designed by two psychologists to provide children with the right balance of learning, fun and engagement. We try to promote a play-based learning environment and help children master the times tables up to 99 without memorising by associating number patters with the times tables,” Hima Soni, director of the camp, said.
Working with children aged six and above, the camp also provides children with dance, robotics, maths, arts and crafts, in addition to other ways to help students grow academically, said Soni.
She spoke about a drumming approach that is said to improve children’s ability to concentrate and increase body awareness, among other benefits.
All three camps said they have a specific mechanism to measure how effective they have been. Parental feedback, surveys and one-on-one sessions with parents to see what more they would like to see at the camp ensure that they meet their objectives. In addition, the organisers said, the fact that parents return to enrol their children every year in their camps is an indication that their children have acquired skills and attitudes of value.
