When summer in the UK comes around, sports become inescapable. Everything from the FA Cup to Wimbledon, and in 2019 the Cricket World Cup is coming to this sceptred isle’s shores. For children, this is the weekly reality too. At school, the playground is now just the beginning, as playing fields become habitable after the winter hiatus, football, cricket, rounders, and many more games become possible and enjoyable once more. But what about outside of school, when the summer holidays kick in? How about a sports summer camp?

Sports Summer Camp

While there are parks aplenty across the land, it is hard to improve upon the advantages of a dedicated sports class in one of the many specialised sports summer camp in London. If you find yourself sitting on the fence about such a possible idea, consider the following six benefits these programmes can offer.

Co-ordination

The skills involved in many different sports and games require a high level of control of the limbs, and coordination between the hand, the foot, and the eyes. Practising and developing these skills as a younger child is an excellent way to encourage development in all sorts of other areas where these kinds of techniques are necessary, and can really help a child grow in moving their body and managing their movements. If your child finds themselves feeling clumsy or uncertain about these things, this kind of class could be perfect for helping. Even if they don’t, the skills and abilities to hone movements to a fine art are well worth acquiring.

Co-operation

As part of many different sporting games and activities at sports summer camp, children will be required to work together in a team. This is a social skill vital to develop across their lives, and starting early is always important. Although the aim of scoring a goal in football, hitting a six in cricket, or running a full rounder in the eponymous sport, can seem very much like individual accomplishments, the fact is that all these and more are team efforts to one degree or another. When a child learns just how important their networked efforts with others can be, that is a lesson they can take through with them their entire life.

Practise

The notion that practise makes perfect is sometimes hard to get children to appreciate, especially when they are very young fully. Doing the same task over and over again can seem boring or dull or otherwise just pointless. Yet this is also when they most need to understand the benefit of cultivating a skill, as that is exactly what will be happening at their schools, or with things like musical instruments, or any number of other areas in life. As they practice more and observe directly just how much better they can get at something when they focus and practice, the notion of the importance of such can become deeply embedded in their young minds. Something they can draw on again and again later on.

Fitness fun

With the increasing prevalence of video games, internet content, and any other more sedentary digital distractions, encouraging children to be active and outdoors has become a near-universally accepted axiomatic good. There is however a danger here, in that if we turn fitness and activities into chores that have to be done so that they can justify children’s online time, interest in such things will only continue to wane. Hence, the need to make fitness a fun thing, a game to be enjoyed and played. At a camp like this, with many other children, with goals and games aplenty to partake in, outdoor activities can return to the status of enjoyable challenge rather than endurance chore.

Confidence

The more of these games and activities a child takes part in, the more they can see their own skills growing, their own abilities adapting and improving, and taking from that a vital lesson. The notion that they have achieved something, that they have reached upwards, taken a lesson or activity to heart, and made something for themselves out of it. Not a physical thing, but a pattern of skill. A skill that they own. That they can do, knowing deep in their minds that they have the confidence to do something is a trait that can only carry good things with it as a child grows, develops, and moves on into more and more complex territories of life.

Character

So very often the lessons learned in sports by children and adults alike are less to do with the physical skills and abilities taught by the game but are the abilities of character and personal development that these experiences give us. Sport is often a microcosm of real life. The effort is important but does not guarantee victory. In defeat, there may be lessons to learn, or there may not. Practice makes better, but not necessarily perfect. Tantrums in the face of defeat are understandable, but not helpful or ultimately even good. All these lessons and more are important things for children to take on board.

Sports summer camp and holiday clubs are an excellent place for children to grow, learn, and ultimately develop the skills they need for all kinds of future applications in many different areas of life.