Structured Summer Camps vs. Free Unscheduled Time: What I Learned As a Teacher and Mom
The coffee ring on the summer camp brochure spread halfway across my kitchen table last June, and my 10-year-old was picking pop-tart crumbs off the sign-up form I’d already half-filled out. “I don’t want to do robotics camp,” he said, not looking up from his Lego. “I want to stay home and build my helicopter.” My 7-year-old nodded, munching a strawberry: “Me too. I don’t want art camp. I want to catch frogs.”
Two years before that, I’d filled their entire summer with back-to-back structured camps. I was teaching 4th grade part-time then, and I bought into what I’d heard so many times: summer should be productive, avoid the summer slide, keep their skills sharp. I mapped out a route that looked like a delivery driver’s schedule: drop oldest at soccer camp by 8:30, drive 12 minutes across town to drop youngest at art camp, pick oldest up at 12, grab fast food in the parking lot, pick youngest up at 3. My steering wheel was always sticky with melted sunscreen and spilled lemonade, and by the third week, I was eating granola bars for lunch in the car and counting down the days until school started. Both kids unraveled fast. Oldest cried in the parking lot because his counselor paired him with a kid he didn’t like for scrimmages. Youngest started wetting the bed again, something she hadn’t done since she was 4. That night after the second meltdown that week, I sat on the couch and realized we’d all been going nonstop since the final school bell, and no one was having any fun.
Last year, I decided to try the opposite: almost no camps, just free unscheduled time. I only kept the one week of horse camp my youngest had begged for months to attend, turned down all the other sign-up invites and group pressure from playdate friends. The first week was rough. By 10 am on Monday, they were yelling over who got the blue sidewalk chalk, I was trying to grade a stack of tutoring papers at the kitchen counter, and I was this close to pulling up the local rec center website to grab a last-minute spot in STEM camp. I texted my sister, a pediatric nurse, and she just said “wait a week. Boredom is uncomfortable at first.” So I waited. I made them go outside if they were fighting over the TV, told them I couldn’t solve every argument, and tried not to panic about the quiet.
By the third week, something shifted. Oldest found a stack of old moving boxes in our garage, and spent three days building a scooter ramp in the driveway. He recruited the 12-year-old neighbor to help, they argued for an hour about the right angle, adjusted it three times, fell off a dozen times, and when it was done, he stood on the porch and showed it off to every person who walked by our house. Youngest spotted caterpillars on the milkweed I’d planted by the back fence, and started collecting them in old tupperware containers. We bought a $10 mesh habitat on Amazon, she checked them three times a day, kept a scribbled notebook of drawings tracking their growth, and even left a piece of apple in the habitat one day because she thought they’d be hungry between meals. When they turned into butterflies and she released them, she cried for 10 minutes, then grabbed her net and went out to collect more the next afternoon.
As a teacher, I’ve seen this play out in the classroom every fall. The kids who come back having had almost every minute of summer structured by camps and lessons are usually great at following directions, but a lot of them struggle when I ask them to come up with their own project idea. They’ll sit and stare at a blank paper for 20 minutes and say “what do I do next?” The kids who had big chunks of unstructured time? They come in with stories about the things they built, the bugs they caught, the games they made up with the neighborhood kids, and they jump into independent work without waiting for me to tell them every step.
That doesn’t mean structured camps are bad, of course. My daughter still talks about her week at horse camp: she learned how to groom a pony, got over her fear of large animals, and made a new friend she still texts on the iPad every weekend. Some kids need more structure to thrive, too: my best friend’s son has ADHD, and he’s miserable with a whole summer of open time. He gets overstimulated, gets into unnecessary trouble, and the predictable routine of camp keeps him regulated and happy.
What we landed on this year is one week of camp per kid, max two, and the rest is open with just two loose ground rules, no fancy daily schedules. First, everyone’s outside playing from 9 to 10 before it gets too hot and humid. Second, 1 to 2 pm is quiet time: no screens, they can read, draw, or lay on their bed and stare at the ceiling if they want. When they say “I’m bored,” I don’t offer suggestions anymore. I just say “I know, that feeling feels weird. I bet you’ll think of something after a little while.” I don’t stress if they have a day where they watch two hours of TV after lunch. Some days that’s what everyone needs.
Last week, my two spent two days digging a hole in the far corner of the backyard. They want it to be a frog pond; right now it just fills with rainwater, has a couple of rocks they dragged over, and leaves mud all over my back patio. I still get that little twinge of guilt when I see other parents posting their full 8-week camp schedules on social media, when I hear people talking about all the skills kids lose if they’re not busy every minute. But so far, this works for us. Some days are messy, some days there’s too much fighting, some days I wish I had a little more structured time to get my own work done. But I’ll take that over the meltdowns in the camp parking lot, over my kids being too tired to do the things they actually care about. I don’t know if there’s one right answer for every kid, but for mine, a little structure and a whole lot of open time is hitting the sweet spot right now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Structured Summer Camps vs