With the long Easter break now over and the final term underway, many parent’s thoughts will be turning to Summer Camps. The local papers have been promoting local camps for weeks and it’s hard to ignore the posters going up in the post office and local shops.

With activities ranging from theatre and singing, art classes, pony riding, football and GAA there is a seemingly endless amount of ways to keep the kids amused, entertained, active and (most importantly) away from under your feet over the summer holidays!

Summer camps were certainly not part of my own childhood – we simply amused ourselves in the back garden making perfume from rose petals, or spent endless days on our bikes and catching sticklebacks in jam jars in the local stream. But this is a different world we live in now and for many parents, the option of letting our children roam freely around the local lanes and rivers is not really an option. Which is a terrible shame, but a fact of modern life.

So, for working parents, Summer Camps are an essential part of managing the long summer break from school, and for work from/stay at home parents like myself, they can also be well worth factoring into the schedule. With the best will in the world and the biggest box of Lego and Play-Doh I can find, there is simply no way I will be able to keep my children fully entertained for eight weeks. A week at a sports camp will be a fantastic way to not only keep my boys active, but will also teach them new skills, independence, confidence and hopefully they will make some new friends along the way.

If you are considering a summer camp, it is worth booking places sooner rather than later as they do tend to fill up quickly.

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