Summer Camp

Melana explains the rules of a modified "Duck, Duck, Goose."

I teach the kids about colors before a painting session.

Melana managed to make our house look like a classroom.

Our younger students were the most enthusiastic learners.

During the summer, Melana and I worked on two projects that offered structured activities for young people while they were out of school. In the US this is often referred to as “camp.” The theory is, children and young adults without structured activities and loads of free time are far more likely to get into trouble in any country regardless of culture. Trouble can be defined as anything from coloring on the walls to throwing balls through windows to drug use.

Structured activities for young people are a rather new concept in rural Costa Rica. It is expected that older children will take care of younger children rather indefinitely with minimal input from the parents except during mealtimes, bedtimes or other ritualized activities.


Keep in mind that this is a system that worked when young people had work to do in the fields and could do jobs around the house at regular intervals. As most young people no longer spend a significant portion of their day on agricultural work, however, they have the opportunity to fall victim to the mother of all bad ideas: boredom.


(Keep in mind that an agrarian model is also why US students have the summers off. If you’re a US student, do YOU work in the fields during the summer?)


The idea that adults would voluntarily spend any more time with children than was absolutely necessary seems a little crazy to the average Tico. Therefore, the idea of camp and structured activities for young people was greeted with skepticism by the community.


So, Melana and I decided that we were going to start with a two day English camp. The first set of kids would come in the morning at 7:30 and the second set would arrive at 12:30. We invited the younger children (7-9) to come in the morning followed by the older kids (10-12) to come in the afternoon.


Melana set up the house to look much like a classroom. There were colorful books everywhere and plenty of space for sitting on the floor. We had 5 participants show up. The kids learned about English and made their own animal books and sang songs. After juice and a snack we took them outside to play.


In the afternoon, we ran into a problem. The younger kids didn’t want to leave! We wound up having to tailor our activities for the younger kids who couldn’t keep up with their more advanced students. In all, we wound up with an afternoon group of about 12 students.


The next week, we helped some other volunteers in a larger city with a much larger camp of 6-12 year olds. We started with about 15 students. This camp was not focused on English learning, however and we engaged the kids with several “camp” like activities. Over the course of the week, friendship bracelets and team-building exercises were all the rage and long, competitive capture the flag style games dominated the late mornings before the kids went home for lunch.


Though all of this was extremely fun and rewarding, the other volunteers and I were exhausted after chasing after children for a week or so. Unlike US kids and young adults, the youth in Costa Rica are not used to structured activities. As such, they need to be guided through every step of the way. Concepts like “tag” need to be explained in nauseating detail because the concept just hasn’t been presented to many of them before. Children usually play on their own, but never with adults watching, and never with rules.


The whole experience reminded me how important structured activities are to childhood development. We don’t just play SPUD, freeze-tag and tennis-baseball because it’s fun. We do it because “play” prepares us for life as an adult. Interacting with other individuals and operating within a series of agreed upon norms are just two examples of skills we can derive from this.


I’ll end this thought here to give you all some more pictures of Costa Rican kids playing.

Introductions are always a must at camp.

Students paint reused soda bottles for potted plants.

In this team builder, participants must turn over the tarp without using their hands!

"Helium Stick" : one of my favorite team builders.

Students join hands for a human knot.

Two students play "capture the flag"