Structured Summer Camps vs. Free Unscheduled Time: What My Kids Taught Me This Year
Last June, I leaned against my kitchen counter staring at the summer camp sign-up portal, a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios growing soggy next to my elbow. My 10-year-old Leo was propped against the fridge, scrolling on his iPad while I debated between week-long STEM camp, half-day soccer, and the art camp my 7-year-old Mia had begged me to try the year before. “Do I have to do three camps this year?” Leo asked, not looking up. “Last year I was so tired by the end of July I didn’t even want to go to Grandma’s.”
He was right. The previous summer, I’d filled every single week with structured activities. I’d bought into the idea that summer learning loss was a ticking time bomb, that idle time would turn their brains to mush. By the third week of back-to-back camps, Leo was dragging his feet out of the car every morning, and Mia had a full-on meltdown because the camp snack didn’t have the flavor of granola bar she liked. We cut the last camp short a day early just to get to the beach, and both kids napped for two hours in the car on the way there.
This year, I switched it up. We only signed up for one week: the horse camp Mia had been talking about nonstop since last fall. The other seven weeks of summer? Just open, unscheduled time. I work part-time from home, so I set ground rules and checked in every hour, but there was no planned activity, no car line to run to, no permission slips to fill out every Sunday night.
The first three days were chaotic. They fought over the TV remote every single morning. Mia kept coming into my home office whining that she was bored, and Leo spent the first two days binging Minecraft until I set the soft limit of no screens before lunch. I kept second-guessing myself: was I doing this wrong? Was I letting them waste their whole summer?
Then something shifted. On day four, Leo climbed into the attic to find his old baseball glove and stumbled on a bin of my childhood Lego that I’d forgotten we stored up there. He dragged it down to the living room floor and didn’t get up for the rest of the day. He decided to build a 3-foot long replica of the Starship Enterprise, and a day later, Mia joined in, adding a cardboard cargo hold out of old Amazon boxes and drawing alien crew members to tape to the sides. They spent two and a half weeks on that project. They negotiated over what pieces went where, they argued when Mia accidentally glued a box on the wrong side, they went to the dollar store to buy paint for the hull with their own allowance. That whole project was entirely theirs – no step-by-step instructions from a camp counselor, no deadline to finish it by the end of the week.
As a former third grade teacher, I’ve read about how unstructured time helps kids practice the skills that no worksheet or structured camp can teach. When kids have to fill their own time, they have to figure out what they like, solve problems on their own, and negotiate with each other when they disagree. But that’s just the research – I’d never seen it play out so clearly in my own house. Leo used to get frustrated and quit when a project didn’t go his way, but because there was no one pushing him to finish, he worked through the mistakes slowly, on his own time.
That doesn’t mean structured camps don’t have their place. Mia’s one week of horse camp was amazing for her. She got to learn how to groom and ride a horse, something she never could have done in our suburban backyard, and she made a friend who loves horses as much as she does. We’re already planning to do that one week again next year.
I’ve found a few small, easy things that make the mix work for us, if you’re trying to figure out the balance this year or next. First, cap structured camps at two weeks in a row, max. After that, most kids I know start to get burnt out from following someone else’s schedule all day. Second, if you have a lot of open time, set just one or two soft boundaries instead of a full packed schedule. We do no screens before lunch, and everyone has to help clean up the mess from their projects before dinner. That’s it. Third, keep a cheap “boredom bin” in a closet: just stuff like old cardboard boxes, glue sticks, magazines, a pack of sidewalk chalk, and a $5 container of playdough. When kids say they’re bored, point them to the bin instead of coming up with an activity for them. Nine times out of ten, they’ll come up with something you never would have thought of.
It’s not all perfect. Two weeks ago, they decided to dig a 2-foot deep hole in the backyard to make a “dinosaur lake” and tracked three pounds of dirt into the house. I spent 20 minutes mopping the entryway after they went to bed that night. I still scroll Instagram and see other parents posting their kids’ amazing camp robotics projects and think maybe I’m shortchanging them.
Last night, I watched Leo rig a pulley system out of old string and a bottle cap to pull his finished Enterprise up onto the top shelf of his closet, because it was too heavy to lift. He watched a 5-minute YouTube tutorial to figure out how to do it, and he tested it three times before it worked. He was so proud he called me in to show me. This wasn’t a project assigned for a camp badge. It was just something he wanted to do.
Camp sign-ups for next year already opened in our area, and I still caught myself scrolling through the options last night, feeling that old pull to fill up the calendar. But this year, I know what works for us: a little structure for the things they can’t do on their own, and a lot of empty space for the things only they can come up with.
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