Skill learning: Short-duration camp works better, says director of city school

Explaining how over the years, times have changed, director of Strawberry Fields High School Atul Khanna says, “With the changing times, parents have now started taking their children on vacation during their summer holidays. More and more parents now look at summer holidays as a time for some family travel. This is why now summer camps of shorter duration are conducted. A 15-day compact training programme during summer holidays works better than a month-long summer camp now. That way, students can spend part of their time on their hobbies, and can spend the other half of their holidays travelling.”

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The idea behind the summer camps is to help students in devoting more time to their hobbies and other extra- curricular activities. Coordinator of the sports camp at Sacred Heart Convent School Poonam Katyal says, “We conduct the sports camp each year in order to help students give more time to athletics. On regular days, students are not able to give as much time to extra-curricular activities due to their academic commitments. This is why summer camps are a great way for students to devote themselves to more activities of their choice.”

“Summer camps are a wonderful way for children to develop their personalities. Through fun-filled activities, students often take up newer art forms that they otherwise wouldn’t venture into. For instance, there are summer camps that offer a single programme in which students get to learn things like dance and swimming lessons. For a student who is otherwise shy to join a dance class or take up music lessons, summer camps are a very good start. The activities that children experiment with in summer camps help them in developing their personalities,” says Rashid, a trainer.

Even as the majority of the camps are centered around extra-curricular activities, some private and government schools have now started conducting compact academic training programmes for the students. “Summer holidays are the longest holidays that students get each year, and it is only fair to put them to good use. We conduct corrective classes for slow learners during the summer holidays in order to help them in catching up with the syllabus,” says a teacher.