Q: How important is it for children to go to educational camps over the summer as opposed to playing or participating in sports?
A: What a great question. It feels a little unreal to me, but the sign-ups for summer camps are already in full swing for many places, so what better time to ask this question than now.
My knee-jerk reaction is: The point of childhood is play. You send the child to a play-based camp, and we don’t even need to ask this question. But the answer to this query depends on many factors: the age of the child, their temperament, what they want, what you can afford, what is possible and what is appropriate for your child’s development.
Because I don’t know the age of your child, let’s start by asking, “What is the definition of play?” Although it feels very much like, “You know it when you see it,” the best and brightest in the field have trouble defining it. I particularly like this quote by Scott G. Eberle, an author and expert on play: “Play is a roomy subject, broad in human experience, rich and various over time and place, and accommodating pursuits as diverse as peekaboo and party banter, sandlot baseball and contract bridge, scuba diving and Scrabble. Play welcomes opposites, too. Play can be free — ungoverned by anything more complicated than choosing which stick is best to improvise a light saber — or fixed and codified, as in those instances when soccer players submit to scrupulous ‘laws.’ Play can take active or passive form and can be vicarious or engaging — and so we recognize […]
View this full article in The Washington Post
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