The Summer Playground

The great outdoors is what your children can explore and enjoy at the NEGI Sports Wilderness Course, which strives to bring children closer to the natural world. The camps, according to Vipul Negi, include challenging and absorbing activities. “All activities, be it rock climbing, rappelling, walking in the wilderness, focus on the value of creating supportive environments, risk-taking as it relates to personal growth, extending one’s limits and empowering others to do their best. These are also powerful team-building experiences,’’ Negi’s camps are a big hit and he now only has two six-day camps for children at Mashobra, with an overnight stay as Narkanda, from May 31 to June 5 and June 16 to June 21. The high points of the camps include inculcating outdoor skills like route-finding and navigation, map and compass use, rescue techniques, along with wilderness injury prevention and treatment and hazard evaluation. Children (above 16) are encouraged to do multi-day mountaineering expeditions, white water rafting, river camping, watching the stars and the galaxy and identifying major stars and constellation...”And of course, there are games, bonfires, tent-pitching, cooking out,’’ Negi lists a host of attractions.

Summer camps are no longer ‘time out’ for a few hours. The involvement of professionals ensures that the children not just have fun, but learn skills, build confidence, interact with peers and at the end of the day have value-addition to their lives. Nods Atul Khanna, who’s packed and designed activities that challenge a child’s physical, mental and artistic abilities. The Durga Das Foundation has Shiamak Davar’s Summer Funk workshop, which has a mix of modern contemporary dance, jazz, funk, rock, hip-hop, salsa...At the end of the fortnight-long workshop (May 26 to June 12) would be a spectacular presentation and it’s open to children in the age group of four to six years, seven to eleven and 12 years onwards, with the workshop fee being Rs 3,200. If dance does not ‘move’ your child, there’s a unique format at hand being offered through the Calm Balm Club. Conducted by Shalini, the focus here is to help children learn to befriend their and others’ feelings. A liberal use of story telling, interactive games, role plays and craft is used to help children find words to label and recognize feelings like anger, sadness, fear, jealousy...Open to children in the age group of three to five years and six to nine years, the workshop’s fee is Rs 2,500 and is on from May 26 to June 11.

The Summer Zone at Kids’ Own in Sector 17 has some ‘haute’ ideas to keep the little ones totally engrossed and occupied. The mantra here, reaffirms Tarun Khanna is to assist children to play, create, think and learn. There are a host of creative activities that can be chosen. Professional artists here will help children give free rein to the artist in them using different media. “The children bring their imagination and we supply the palette for bringing their creations to life,” smiles Tarun, adding that mask-making, cartoons/caricature, landscape painting and drawing will too be covered. Special interactive story-telling and communication sessions for children with established childrens’ books authors will emphasize on active listening, organizing thoughts and ideas and pronunciation. An interesting concept here is food for the soul, wherein a qualified nutritionist would teach healthy eating habits through non-fire cooking recipes and there’s also yoga and dance to squeeze in some health and fitness.

Many workshops are including a multitude of activities that keep changing each day, so that children can soak in more, yet not lose interest. At the Go Bananas Kids Club camp, which will be held at First Steps Playschool, Sector 26 from from May 22 to June 8, from dance to theatre, craft to conversational skills, film-making module to soft skills enhancements, Anu says they have also packed in a stage performance, exhibition, movie show, field visit and a big bash. “ Indu Luthra believes summer camps should be break from hard work and involve the kid’s creative faculties. At the Sanjivni KIDZ KLUB, a theatre workshop will be conducted by Kapil Kalyan, a theatre and film actor and a classical dance workshop by Moshina. “We also have extensive art classes,’’ informs Luthra, adding that registration for the four-week workshop will begin from May 15. Bubbles’ workshop (starting May 21) is aptly titled Karyakalap and it’s for both children and adults. According to Sudhanshu Aggarwal, they also have an exclusive language club here and add-on activities like yoga, rangmanch, kalakari, martial arts...

In the creative section the Coveda Summer workshops are offering lessons in guitar and flute (May 5 to June 5) for children between 9 and 12, as well as kathak, story creation, theatre and basket weaving (all beginning May 19)! “Designed with thought and clarity, we strive to make a difference and not just pass time,’’ pronounces Ashu Sharma, who’s teaching children the nuances of stage.