Summer camp is a supervised program for children or teenagers conducted during the summer months in some countries. Children and adolescents who attend summer camp are known as campers.
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. In 2006, the American Camp Association reported that 75 percent of camps added new programs. This is largely to counter a trend in decreasing enrollment in summer camps, brought about by smaller family sizes, the growth in supplemental educational programs and the popularity of electronic media, all of which have made keeping children inside and occupied much easier than in previous generations. Camps can be for all ages.
There are also religiously affiliated summer camps, such as those run by Evangelical Christian groups and various denominations of Judaism.
The primary purpose of many camps is educational or cultural development. A summer camp environment may allow children to take healthy risks in a safe and nurturing environment.
Read more about Summer Camp: Organization, Educational Camps, Art and Performing Art Camps, Travel Camps, Sports Camps, Weight Loss Camps, Jewish Camps
Famous quotes containing the words summer and/or camp:
“The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Usually the scenery about them is drear and savage enough; and the logger’s camp is as completely in the woods as a fungus at the foot of a pine in a swamp; no outlook but to the sky overhead; no more clearing than is made by cutting down the trees of which it is built, and those which are necessary for fuel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)