As the school year winds down, parents are getting wound up, worrying about what programs and activities they can provide to their children over summer break. Mailboxes are stuffed and counters are strewn with summer camp catalogs and fliers. I’m convinced that selecting what comes next adds to the stress of year-end school activities for families.
Many parents need to line up childcare for their kids during their school vacations, and if this can be accomplished through enriching activities, all the better. Another motive is the parental desire to nudge or budge a budding ceramicist, rock climber, pastry chef, robotics engineer or digital photographer. (And at eight years old, times a wastin’ for that child.) Other parents are eager to pre-empt the battle cry of the idle child: “I’m bor-r-r-r-ed. I have nothing to do!”
If I was bored as a child during the summer, years have erased that sensation. Summer camps were neither as plentiful when I was a child nor as practical for a family of ten children. At the present-day pop of $200 per person for five afternoons at a single camp, we would have been running around barefoot out of necessity instead of out of pure glee.
Besides, my mother was once a schoolteacher herself, and she loved to assume the post come June. Mostly, though, she left us to our own imaginations, a priceless proposition in these times of structured schedules and programmed days that may leave children feeling all “camped out” upon their return to school in mid-August.
On behalf of families with unhappy campers and checkbook chafing, I’m happy to provide some items from my summer living “catalog,” inspired by my childhood. Fees are negligible. Locations convenient. Satisfaction? Guaranteed.
Money can buy many experiences for children, but so can time and a little freedom to explore. Which is more worthwhile? That can be difficult to measure. As a teacher, I know I can fill a child with knowledge and teach him or her a skill, like those summer camps. Imagination can be a little more difficult to acquire. It resides in the dirt-grubbing, paste-picking, clover-hunting hands of a child. When they are their own teachers, and time can be theirs for hours.
Lucy Ewing (lucyewing@comcast.net) is an elementary school teacher and parent in the Boulder Valley School District with a background in marketing, television production, and growing up with lots of siblings. She is a member of this year’s Colorado Voices panel.
