Now that your kids are home from camp and headed back to school, Christopher Britton has some suggestions for how they can take what they learned at camp and apply it to their school year.
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Nothing compares to a productive camp adventure as a great way for your kids to remember the summer. A summer camp adventure paves the way for valuable experiences and teaches kids to become independent. Don’t be surprised if your kids found camp as the perfect place to veer away from their gadgets for a while and make new friends.
As a dad, of course, you would want your kids to become more street smart. Now that they’ve come back from summer camp, prioritizing the lessons they gained from their adventures becomes important to you.
You would not want to limit the sensational life lessons your kids need to learn. Therefore, it is essential to make up for the worries that nag you by checking in on the things your kids have learned from camp that will help them overcome difficulties when they do go back to school.
A Sense of Ownership Safety
It is essential that you teach your kids a sense of ownership for their actions. You should clearly and thoroughly explain to your kids the benefits and learning experiences owning up brings to their regular interactions with their surroundings. You need to give specific explanations to avoid confusions.
If your kids are able to keep in mind the necessity of owning up for events that they’ve learned in camp, they are likely going to feel more encouraged in tweaking their preparedness guide when they go back to school.
Children will be more than proud to show friends in school how much they’ve grown and become more responsible over the summer.
Camp Friendships Prevented Bullying
Undoubtedly, friendships in summer camp did their parts in scaring away the bullies. Motivate your kids to be fearless enough to be sociable in school to make friends. Your little ones should have learned the lesson that true friends will make efforts to protect them against other kids who may have nothing but bad intentions.
Focus on the Positives, Not the Negatives
Motivating kids to view their summer camp experience as a memorable one avoids tendencies of pessimism during the back-to-school season. Lessening pessimism has the tendency to also minimize mishaps leading to accidents, in turn, securing your kids from any potential dangers that may lurk around.
Abiding by Adult Supervision
In keeping up with your kid, especially in this digital age, it is perfectly understandable for kids to have become used to having little to no adult supervision while tinkering with their gadgets.
However, you need to make sure your child realize that outdoor activities are very different from those of indoors. You need to make them realize that outdoor activities pose greater risks for danger than indoor activities do. With this said, convince your kids to never forget to give high regard to the supervisory strategies adults in their summer camp implemented to shield them from foreseeable dangers.
Sun Block Alert
Make it a habit to check your kids’ school bag to see if they’ve brought sunblock with them to school, like what they did when they went camping. Fall season does not completely rule out the presence of strong sunshine outdoors. Getting exposed to the heat of the sun in playgrounds is still a probable incident your kids may get into in school.
Delve into the issue thoroughly by specifically explaining to your kids the dangers excessive sun heat may bring to their skin, which sometimes include skin cancer. Doing this enables you to give them the heads up about the seriousness of your advice, and the major importance of complying with it.
Boosted Child’s Memory
Keeping pertinent documents with your kids, such as safety rules and regulations, is very important. If your child has a tendency to become forgetful, make efforts in boosting his memory so as to avoid losing pertinent papers while in school, like what he learned to do when he was attending camp.
To follow things up, train your child to sharpen his memory on a daily basis by practicing remembering the locations where he placed his things.
Practicing the Emergency Drill Basics
Of course, while at camp, being in the wilderness posed dangers for your children that could have appeared unexpectedly. Require your children to demonstrate the things they learned in camp. Observe them as they show you how to evacuate efficiently and quickly and administer DIY medical emergency rescue strategies. Doing so should arm them with the necessities to survive if emergencies occur while they’re in school.
Being with Your Child Constantly May Do More Harm Than Good
Avoid being overprotective of your child, while at the same time, never neglect to perform your responsibilities as a dad. Envision the importance of allowing your kid to become more independent, knowledgeable, and to learn from his or her mistakes. Develop the awareness of the importance of allowing your kid to be away from you sometimes, even at a young age, by taking part in sleepovers and play dates. Sleepovers and play dates should be nothing new to your child after they have experienced going on a camping adventure.
Once they’ve gotten the hang of being on their own, they will likely be able to enhance their decision-making and judgment abilities.
Hard Work Is the Key to Early Success
Kids never got away with doing nothing in camp. They were warmly accepted to go on a summer camp because each of them had a role to play. Laziness is unacceptable from campers. By learning to take their turns in cleaning up after dinner, your kiddos will get used to happily doing every task assigned to them, even after they leave camp. As a result, you can expect your kids to work hard in completing their school work even if they hate doing it.
Guide little ones in understanding outdoor safety better. You just never know when these summer camp safety tips will be of use to them again in the future. Now that summer is over, take some time to let your kids reflect on the lessons they learned from camp they won’t learn anywhere else.
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Credit: Image—Rudi Schlatte/Flickr; Credit: Image—Peter Blanchard/Flickr