Summer camps, a big deal in Abuja

It is more difficult because although the children are on holidays, the parents are still working. Though some parents were wise enough to take their annual leave around this period, entertaining children for more than a month is no easy task.But remember there is a saying that, “all work and no play makes Jack a […]

It is more difficult because although the children are on holidays, the parents are still working. Though some parents were wise enough to take their annual leave around this period, entertaining children for more than a month is no easy task.
But remember there is a saying that, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” A holiday period is usually time to take a break from academic work and have fun but most of the time it is right to have fun in the most profitable way.
Over the years, parents who are financially buoyant plan expensive trips to the UK, USA or Dubai during the long summer to expose their children to sights and activities different from those in their home country, Nigeria. On the other hand, parents who cannot go on annual leave and have jobs and businesses to attend to, leave the entertainment of their children to housemaids.
But a trend is springing up in Abuja which appears to be a solution that could work for both categories of parents: summer camps. Immediately the children went on holidays late July, banners of summer camps started springing up around Abuja. Most of them promised to engage children of mostly between five to 17 years of age in extracurricular activities for three weeks or up to a month.
The emergence of summer camps for children was due to pressure from parents who do not know how to occupy their kids during the holiday.
But it is still a foreign idea. If parents cannot afford to fund trips to tourist attractions, they turn to God by registering their children in Islamic or Bible schools.
A summer camp is a supervised programme for children or teenagers conducted during the summer months in some countries.
The traditional view of a summer camp as a woody place with hiking, canoeing, and campfires is evolving, with greater acceptance of newer summer camps that offer a wide variety of specialized activities. For example, there are camps for the performing arts, music, magic, computers, language learning, mathematics, children with special needs, and weight loss.
But here in Abuja, most summer schools prefer going back to school curriculum activities because they feel it is better to revise what the students learnt in school as well as introduce them to the curriculum they are likely to meet in the next session.
Mrs. Helen Olusegun, a parent opines that though it is important the summer schools introduce the children to the academic work for the new session, it is also good they learn other extracurricular activities.
 “I am not really impressed with what I am getting from summer schools these days,” Mrs. Joan Ibeh, another parent lamented. Comparing how summer schools were organised in the 80s to the present, she said the organisers have missed the focus.
She said summer schools should not dwell on academic activities but rather organize programmes that would make the children enjoy their ‘holiday’.
 “Most of the beads you see me put on were things I learnt during summer school during my time but unfortunately now, there is nothing new my children bring back home from summer school instead they come back with Maths assignment and so on,” she said.
Daily Trust went out to find out exactly what some of these camps have to offer. Mrs. Abiola Oduwusi, proprietress of Lela Blossom Academy agrees that regular school activities are most times not able to accommodate extracurricular activities which are really important in building up a child.
Oduwusi said some of the activities which children in Lela Blossom Summer Camp would learn are “majorly practical aspects of sciences, leadership skills, games, cookery, bead making basically. For English they could do things like vocabulary, for sciences they would do more experiments. We are doing a lot of things outside the academic curriculum.”
Suggesting activities parents should engage their children in during vacation, she said: “Parents should try and engage their children in music lessons, dance classes. If at all they will do academic work it should be limited to teaching them what they could not learn thoroughly during the last term.”
Bearhug season four which is another summer programme for children within the ages of 7- 13 organized by the Federal Capital Territory, City Library under Education Resource Center is taking a technical approach.
Hajiya Neemat Abdulrahim, Head, FCT City Library said the summer programme would focus on what the children needed to learn in school but failed to.
“This year we are introducing things like crafts.  We also want to introduce activities on entrepreneurship. This year, we want to teach them things like printing on t-shirts, card making as well as drama amongst other extracurricular activities,” Abdulrahim said.
For Prof. Adewale Solarin, Director General, National Mathematics Center, it is important to introduce academic activities during a summer camp programme but it should not be total.
“It is very important to also introduce games for the children to make them take a break from routine academic activity.”
But Solarin still believes the games to be introduced should be games that are related to academics.  
  Recently, the International Academy for the Gifted concluded a summer camp programme organized for academically gifted children in Abuja.
The students were not only trained in their usual subjects but were also exposed to brain tasking games such as Kakuro, Rubiks Cube and Chess which still involved intellectual ability.
For John Etim, a student of St. Patrick College, Calabar who went through the Gifted students summer programme, medals that were earned at the end of the programme were through hard work as they were really made to go through lots of activities but he suggested that further camp programmes should “empower students on the ability to do other things.”
A regular participant of the Bearhug Summer Camp, Nwobu Francis said his spelling and reading skills have improved.
 “I have now also been able to conquer stage fright from the way we are compelled to make presentations during the summer programme,” he said.
Sharon Ojewunmi would be in primary five when school resumes for the next session. She said the use of a dictionary would no longer be a challenge when she begins her new class.
Whether the summer camps dwell more on academics rather than extracurricular activities, many would agree that it is still better than leaving your children at the mercy of househelps or cartoon channels on television.