Here are a few great ways to validate the importance of camp during winter break. Make your dreams of attending a meeting or cooking dinner without interruptions come true too!
As a parent of two active boys, ages 6 and 8, I frequently consider adding “Rambunctious” and “ER” to their middle names. Needless to say, most school breaks create a sense of panic on how to keep them engaged and our home, now workspace zen.
With winter break around the corner, my survival mom goal is to end the year without any trips to the emergency room while my more thoughtful mom instincts urge me to make use of the time for learning experiences that the boys don’t get in the classroom.
Winter camp is amazing for five reasons.
1. Get Progress Report Help
In pre-pandemic times, learning loss was mainly associated with the summer slide. Since the 2020 lockdown, helping kids catch up from the extended school closures has been both challenging and real for many families.
“We now share assessment data from this fall, which show that students, on average, started school about three months behind where we would expect them to be in mathematics. The picture for reading is more positive, with students starting school just a month and a half behind historical averages.”
McKinsey & Company’s “COVID-19 and Learning Loss”
You’ve seen your kids progress reports at this point, and hopefully they are doing ok. Winter is the second longest break after summer so it’s a good time to start closing any gaps with activities. Now’s the time to start supporting ongoing academic learning and social emotional development.
Learning doesn’t always require a textbook and worksheets. Exploring new experiences generally facilitates brain building, whether it’s concentrated in academics or enrichment.
2. Bring Home Thoughtful Holiday Gifts Created at Camp
Multi-task. Sign your kids up for Art, S.T.E.M. or Cooking classes that produce holiday gifts for loved ones. Playing is learning! Your kids get to experience a fun activity while acquiring new skills, you have one less person to shop for and you get a few hours of time to yourself. That’s a triple win.
Personally, this is one of my favorite options for winter camp. In past years, my older son enjoyed a jewelry making camp that produced necklaces with real clasps that were gifted to his two grandmas. My younger son did an art camp that generated many rolls of “abstract” paintings, perfect for gift wrap.
3. Convert High Energy Kids to Tired Kids
The benefit of living in California during winter is that our version of cold (50°-60°F) is the rest of the country’s idea of perfect weather. Explore a new sport or revisit an old favorite to keep your house from looking like an indoor tornado recently visited.
Invite your kid’s besties, so it becomes a play date and you can just drop them off. Your kids will have the opportunity to make new friends, too.
This upcoming winter break, we searched for camps that could help the kids stay active and outside. Their current interests are soccer and basketball, so finding a place that returns them to us tired was the only other prerequisite.
4. Find COVID Conservative Support
For families who remain at home, creating your own personalized camp has never been easier! Attend live Online and On-Demand activities from anywhere. There are academic classes to help with tutoring support. There’s also really fun opportunities to just attend a virtual dance party, music or Minecraft classes. Mix and match the options to your kid’s interests.
This is also a great way for COVID Conservative friends to stay connected with friends both near and far that they haven’t been able to see in person.
5. Give Yourself a Break
At the height of the pandemic, I was on a video call for work while my kids were quietly playing amongst themselves. It all seemed so normal, until the staircase in my background was suddenly filled with a river of stuffed animals rolling downward. A “rain” of Nerf ammo followed for the dramatic conclusion. Every parent at home working remotely with kids during this time has a version of this story. While it is hilarious now, it’s also not something we want to relive.
Parent’s getting time for themselves is a good thing. Sign your kids up for camp. Keep calm and carry on.
Scholarships are also available for families in need.
Make Planning Easy
Do you need to coordinate camps and carpools with friends? Juggling a camp schedule with multiple children is like playing a real life game of Tetris. Save time and plan the ultimate camp experience on ActivityHero with your child’s classmates, teammates, and neighbors with the ‘Invite Friends” feature!
Discover more kid-approved camp options now enrolling for winter camps and classes at ActivityHero, a marketplace of offerings near you in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Orange County. Plus, earn bonus reward points when you download ActivityHero’s iOS app for faster and easier searching!
Written by Tabetha Chau, a mom of two boisterous kiddos in Oakland. She helps out on the ActivityHero marketing team. In her spare time, she also catches Pokémon and tries to learn Mandarin with her family.