Overnight Camp: An Essential Childhood Experience

Overnight camp is just like day camp, but with the kids sleeping over… right?

WRONG.

Giving your child a day camp experience is nothing at all like signing them up for overnight camp. In fact, the two camp experiences are barely comparable. Here are ten advantages children receive from overnight camp that they will probably get in almost no other way:

1. Overnight camp provides your child with a summer home-away-from-home: a special and unique community of young people where the friendships formed are often so tight that the bonds last a lifetime. Young people live with their friends for the duration of the adventure, and return to reconnect with these special friends every summer.  No matter what challenges children face throughout the year, they always have the magic and the community of their overnight camp to look forward to, and to dream about.

2. Overnight camp gives young people the chance to build a world of their own, and to remake the world the way they wish it could be. A good camp, with good staff, is  kid-utopia: safe, empowering and free from the pressures that often plague our kids in school.

3. Overnight camp is an immersion experience! As an adult, imagine two weeks to improve your golf… or write that novel… and you will see that living an experience is a far different deal from enjoying it in an evening activity, or for a few hours in the day. Whether your child wants to master an instrument, become an actor, improve their tennis stroke or experience wilderness… being immersed in the environment enables growth and learning on a whole other level… one provided no other way.

4. Overnight night is all about skills you might not pick  up in school… skills specific to the needs and interests of your child. So many wonderful skills – from waterskiing to filmmaking, rock climbing to robotics, computers to chess, novel writing to kayaking – can be learned at overnight camp, both as personal enrichment and a possible route to future careers. And if you think these can be learned just as easily in day camp… go back to point 3.

5. Overnight camp is all about meeting other people who may be different from you. Because young people sleep over,  they come from many different places. In the case of many overnight camps, young people come from various countries and cultures, from rural and city homes, from different family and religious backgrounds, from state and private schools. Many parents see overnight camp as a means to widen their child’s outlook, in an increasingly global world. Overnight camp teaches young people to accept and celebrate diversity, and to welcome others who may be different to them.  And again, children make connections at overnight camp they will value for the rest of their lives.

6. Conversely, overnight camp is about meeting others who are the same as you! Centauri is an arts specialist camp. There is a good chance that if your child wants to be a filmmaker, write a novel, make music or apply to drama school, their connection to others with similar interests and personality types may be somewhat limited in their home community. At  overnight camp, young people find their ‘tribe’ – others they can connect to, because of shared interests, or a shared view of the world.

7. Overnight summer camp builds confidence and self reliance in a safe and supportive environment. Young people learn to advocate for their own needs, and to express not the person they have always been, but the person they wish to be right now, and the individual they hope they will become in the future. They get to redefine themselves… while learning to take care of their possessions, make their own bed, clean up after themselves and practise good hygiene.

8. Overnight camp builds personal skills like no other environment. Young people learn to be adaptable, eating foods that may be differently, or prepared differently. They hone their team skills, learning to support one another, and to step forward as a leader at times. They meet age-appropriate challenges, and celebrate their accomplishments. And they do all this in a community that is positive, above all else.

9. A good overnight camp provides growing children with the best possible role models. Children have the opportunity to interact with other people who are older than them, but younger than their parents and teachers. I have lost count of the number of campers, over the years, who have looked to their camp counsellor and said: I want to be just like them. Young people get to chat with university students who excel at the very things they have started to enjoy. What better way to inspire youth to work hard in school, and to develop character, than to present them with a young person a few years older who has begun to achieve, through hard work, all the things they long to do themselves.

10. Overnight camps offer free time… and this can lead to wonderful and unexpected opportunities. Most Centauri campers return home knowing a few chords on the guitar, regardless of what they set out to do, because kids chill and play guitar during free time. Often, they go home knowing a few words in new languages, and with an appreciation for poetry, art and a specific genre of music. The key? Free time where counsellors always hang out with their campers. This ensures a positive environment… and choices of conversation a parent would not only approve of, but welcome.

I’ve used the phrase ‘a good overnight camp’ several times above. How can you tell a good overnight night from a mediocre or potentially damaging one? In my view, as a camp director with 20 years’ experience, a good camp is one in which the camp counsellors are hired with upmost care, and then supervise their campers continually throughout the day. Our  camp counsellors are not only great role models and wonderful human beings… they are at camp because they want to spend a summer working with children or youth, and for that reason they are fun to be around! This means that if the supervision is continual, campers don’t feel ‘supervised, they feel supported, and special. Bullying, cliques, exclusion and inappropriate conversations never surface, and the camp becomes a safe place – emotionally as well as physically – in which young people can learn and grow.

Now you see why an overnight camp is far, far more than a day camp with accommodation! To get more of a sense of what is possible at overnight camp, visit our website at www.centauriartscamp.com

Julie Hartley
Director
Centauri Summer Arts Camp
& Centauri Arts Academy
www.centauriartscamp.com