It is that time of year again!
Summer is here, and for many parents, this can be something for a headache. Just how do you keep the kids entertained?
Luckily there is a fantastic solution – Summer camps are a fantastic way of keeping the kids busy and happy and the parents sane!
But Summer Camps for kids are more than just about having fun. The numerous other benefits include confidence building, exercise, building social skills and more. Overall, camps for children are a great way to promote the healthy mental and physical development of kids.
This post looks at some of the key benefits of summer camps for kids.
Outdoor Camps for Children – How they can benefit your kids
Barrel loads of fun, new experiences, plenty of exercise, there is an endless list of great reasons for booking a Multi-Activity Camp for kids. And all this fun brings loads of additional benefits for kids (and parents!), including:
1. Helps to develop Social Skills
Gaining social skills is a crucial part of a child’s development. Multi-Activity Summer Camps are a great way of boosting these skills. Summer camps allow children to mix with other kids from outside their usual social sphere.
This helps to build their confidence for meeting new people, which is a critical life skill that is easiest learnt when young. Many youngsters come away from camp having forged long-lasting friendships with kids they wouldn’t otherwise have met.
2. Boosts self-esteem and confidence
Confidence and self-esteem are other critical factors in a kid’s development. Summer camps for children are a fantastic way of boosting these traits and promoting a sense of self-worth, competitiveness, and awareness of previously unknown skills.
The relaxed and fun atmosphere of a summer camp is a fantastic environment to hone healthy competition, learn new skills, interact with others, and deal with new situations. All these factors combine to boost a child’s overall confidence in themselves and their abilities.
3. New Experiences and Interests
A large part of the excitement of childhood is experiencing new activities. Multi-activity summer gives them an abundance of new experiences to enjoy, and you never know, but any of these could just be the trigger for a lifelong hobby, interest, or even career.
Camps vary in the type and number of activities that they offer. At Astropark, our fun-filled activities include:
- Coached football sessions and games
- Bubble football
- Multi-sport target zone
- NERF AstroWars
- Gaelic football
- Crazy Sports day
- Speed Radar
And parents needn’t worry about rainy days either. If it rains, there are plenty of indoor games and movies to ensure the kids are always busy and happy.
4. Reap the benefits of exercise
Adults will frequently compare today’s kids with their generation, frequently in terms like – “when I was young, we’d be outdoors from dawn to dusk, youngsters these days don’t exercise enough.”
While we do tend to look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, there is more than an element of truth to this. Today’s youth have far more indoor entertainment available and lead greatly more sedentary lifestyles than previous generations. In fact, various recent reports have proven that kids exercise less, one released by the WHO found that 85% of girls and 78% of boys do not meet the minimum recommendation of one hour of physical activity daily.
Exercise is crucial in the healthy development of kids. Apart from aiding the development of strength and stamina, exercise promotes overall good mental and physical health.
5. Teaches teamwork
Learning to work as a team is a critical part of any kid’s development. Many of the activities at a children’s camp are geared around instilling the “teamwork is best” ethos into kids and ensuring that they have fantastic fun as they learn, making the lesson all the more powerful.
At Astropark, our activities are designed to maximise the benefits that kids get from the experience and a large part of this focus is geared towards teaching the importance of teamwork.
Children’s Camps – Great for Parents Too
As well as being fantastic and healthy fun for kids, camps are also hugely beneficial for parents.
Amongst the many reasons that parents can benefit by booking a camp for kids are:
Cost-effective – Working parents can find it difficult to know what to do with the kids during school holidays. Kids camps offer a cost-effective and flexible solution for busy parents.
The cost savings are even better when children are booked in as a group! Our multi-group discount is available for groups of up to 5 children. Better yet, they do not need to be in the same family! This means that friends can club together and take advantage of this offer. There are more details of the group discount listed below.
Peace of mind – Outdoor camps are run to rigorous safety standards that allow parents the complete peace of mind that comes from knowing their kids are being well looked after and safe.
Keeping your children safe at summer camp is our number one priority! Amongst the measures, we take to achieve this is:
- Children are divided up into age groups to ensure they are all paired with others of a similar physical stature.
- Each group has its own supervisor.
- The same supervisor remains with the group for the entire week.
Peace at home too! – Let’s face it, sometimes it is nice to have some quiet time without the demands of children to think about. Recent events have meant that such times were increasingly rare as families were locked down together. Sending your kids off to camp gives parents time to take a breath and spend a little time pampering themselves.
We have two summer camp facilities in the Dublin area, Coolock and Tallaght, whichever you choose, your kids are guaranteed to love their time at summer camp.
Full Details of the Astro Park Group Discount
Our group discount scheme is designed to reduce costs for parents (or groups of parents) who wish to book multiple children for one of our summer camps. How the group discount works is detailed below:
- The discount is available for groups of up to 5 children. The children don’t need to be from the same family, this makes it ideal for classmates, neighbours etc. who want to send their children as a group.
- The group can be booked by one parent from the group. But the details of the other parents must be provided, and all parents must complete an online registration form.
Camp pricing and details of the discount are displayed in the table below.
| 5-day camp | Price | Discount | Final Cost | Total Savings | Hours per week (5 days – 9 am – 3 pm) | Cost per hour |
| Child 1 | €90.00 | 0% | €90.00 | €0.00 | 30 | €3.00 |
| Child 2 | €81.00 | 10% | €171.00 | €9.00 | 60 | €2.85 |
| Child 3 | €81.00 | 10% | €252.00 | €18.00 | 90 | €2.80 |
| Child 4 | €81.00 | 10% | €333.00 | €27.00 | 120 | €2.78 |
| Child 5 | €81.00 | 10% | €414.00 | €36.00 | 150 | €2.76 |
The camps run for the entire eight weeks of the primary school holiday season and the above-noted group discount is available for the entire period.
Final Thoughts
These are only a few of the benefits that kids can glean from our Summer Activity Camps. But at the heart of any successful camp, one factor is more important to the kids than all these benefits – Fun!
Try to get your kids to eat their vegetables, and tantrums can arise – no matter how good for you something is, if it isn’t fun, kids will dig their heels in. Kids love camps and all the fun they provide. This means they experience all the benefits of something healthy without having to spend 30-minutes trying to coax them to eat their broccoli.
Astro Park’s activity camps have been developed to ensure that kids have all the fun they could ever dream of, and at the same time, they promote good health, good mental development and provide loads of happy memories that will last a lifetime.
Why not contact us today and find out more about our fun-packed outdoor camps for kids.
