Your child's first camp: 5 ways to prepare them for a new adventure

How to make you child's first camp experience enjoyable for them

Tell your child about your first camp experience

Before going to the first camp, it's a good idea for your child to know what to expect. Use personal experience to familiarise your child with what they will experience on this new adventure. Try to focus on the good times, the fun you had, but also talk about the friendships you made. But it's important not to ignore the less pleasant aspects too. It's good for your child to know that worry is not a weakness, but a normal feeling before an unknown experience or that it can be difficult to spend time away from parents, grandparents or close friends.

Talk to your little one about his concerns

Talk to them about other children's experiences of their first camp

It can be a real help for your child to hear from other children who have already been to summer camp how they did, what they enjoyed, what they liked and disliked and what the benefits of such an experience are. Hearing from children close in age to your child about the activities that take place at camp, the friendships that are made and how fun and educational such an experience can be can make your child more relaxed and eager to embark on this new adventure.

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Plan evenings away from home

Prepare the travel luggage together

An important step before any trip is packing. Although for some adults this can be a tiring and stressful task, for children it can be a sign of independence. Together with your child choose clothes for his first camp and be prepared to consider his opinions. At the same time, to alleviate some of the homesickness, make sure he packs some of his favourite things for his first summer camp: a book he loves to read before bed, a toy he likes to play with, his favourite blanket, a family photo or some items of clothing he feels comfortable in.
It's essential that your little one packs all the things that make them feel good and help them get through some tough times.

Keep a close connection though Kinderpedia

Children's excitement is at an all-time high as they prepare to leave for camp and parents are overwhelmed with anticipation. Especially if it's their first time away. Kinderpedia opens up a window to the adventures children have at camp. 

Using any of the communication features available in the teachers’ app, educators and group guides can easily send messages, upload photos and videos and fully use the “show don’t tell” approach to make parents feel at ease about how their kids are feeling. This way, parental anxiety disappears and makes way for smiles.

Whenever necessary, parents and children can jump on a video call, directly within the app. Kinderpedia’s integration with Zoom is meant to allow for frictionless online classes and parent-teacher communication, if necessary. However, on such a particular occasion, it is very easy for educators to initiate such a conversation and allow children to feel less far from home.

All memories gathered on this adventure can be safely shared on Kinderpedia’s newsfeed -  the safe digital space that centralises all school-related announcements and important milestones. Educators can tag each child so that only parents of participating children see such updates. By filtering updates this way, Kinderpedia makes sure that parents only see what’s relevant for them, saving them the urge to spend hours scrolling through bits of updates.