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At SuperCamp, Having Fun Helps Build Life Skills

Unlock your chld's potential for learning and personal growth at SuperCamp. This powerhouse program for preteens and teens, held at colleges across the country, provides a unique mix of learning through fun.

SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

edited by Bethany Young Hardy

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the variety of “summer enrichment” camps available for your child. Which camp will help them build valuable life skills like self-esteem and assertiveness, in addition to letting them have fun? Some camps are not much more than glorified and expensive vacations for the kids who attend, with far more downtime and unstructured free time than learning taking place. When you're parenting children who need help with their academics as well as their life skills, that's not what you need.

SuperCamp, an enrichment camp that has produced 55,000 graduates over the past 30 years, integrates fun with learning, with demonstrated results. Students get a clear understanding of their incredible potential and gain the learning tools, confidence, and motivation to go for it and follow their dreams.

Unlike most school classrooms, SuperCamp creates an optimal learning environment by using physical activity, creativity, music, images, color, and other methods designed to actively engage kids in their own learning. Campers do have 90 minutes of daily free time in the afternoon, but the learning never stops. In fact, the camp’s 10-day Senior Forum program for high school students contains 90 hours of instruction. Yet, when graduation day comes, the kids don’t want to leave.

Brandon Shaler, a recent SuperCamp graduate, says it best:  “You’re going to have the best time of your life. Everything is amazing. You get better grades, you learn how to communicate better with people and it’s nothing like school.”

Results proven by research

Research has shown that SuperCamp makes a difference in the lives of young people. An independent study of 6,000 SuperCamp graduates conducted in the late 1990s found that…

  • 73% of SuperCamp grads reported an increase in grades in the year following SuperCamp
  • 68% reported an increase in motivation
  • 81% reported an increase in confidence
  • 84% reported an increase in self-esteem
  • 98% continued to use learning and/or life skills acquired at SuperCamp

Parents of students who have attended SuperCamp often comment on what a valuable investment it is for their kids. Months after camp is over, parents observe SuperCamp’s value in terms of better grades at school, better relationships at home, and seeing their children more focused, confident and motivated.

Indeed, the program’s impact on motivating young people toward higher education has been documented. A 2009 SuperCamp study of high school students who recently graduated from SuperCamp found that 77% went from high school directly into a four-year college. (The national average is 46%, according to the U.S. Department of Education.) And 88% reported going from high school directly into either a four-year or two-year college, while the national average is 65%.

Two new locations

SuperCamp’s seven-day middle school summer programs and 10-day high school summer programs are held at prestigious schools across the country each summer. This year, for the first time in its 29-year history, SuperCamp will be held at the University of California (UCLA) and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

In addition to the two Los Angeles summer camp locations, SuperCamp pre-teen and teen summer camps will take place in California at Stanford University, Palo Alto and Cal State University, San Marcos. There are also camps at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the University of Washington, Seattle; Colorado College, Colorado Springs; and Lake Forest Academy in Chicago.

SuperCamp also runs a unique eight-day college summer program for incoming and current college students called Quantum U, which is held in late July on the beautiful Colorado College campus in Colorado Springs. This program arms college students with the tools to manage the independence of college life and studies successfully, while preparing for a post-college career.

Helping kids learn and grow

SuperCamp uses a proprietary method of teaching and learning called Quantum Learning that SuperCamp co-founder Bobbi DePorter and her team of educators have developed and refined over the last three decades. These brain-based methods unlock a student’s full potential for learning and personal growth.

The program works, according to Kathy Shoemaker, mom of a SuperCamp graduate and a high school counselor.

"I am a huge fan of SuperCamp. My son, Mark, went for four years,” Shoemaker says. “It had a huge impact on his life. He struggled through middle school even though he is quite bright. SuperCamp helped him understand himself as a learner. It also helped him see himself as successful and a leader. He just finished his first year of college and had his best grades ever.”

For more information, visit SuperCamp’s website or call 800-285-3276.

 

Bethany Young Hardy is a mom, writer, and public relations consultant. Her experience includes political, nonprofit, and healthcare communications.

Photo courtesy of SuperCamp

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Inspire Your Kids to Cook

 

by Christina DiMartino

 

Your kids—boys and girls alike—express a desire to cook from a very early age, likely without your even realizing it. They make mud pies in the sandbox, play with child-sized cooking sets, and organize kitchens in doll houses or play areas, and they probably inquire about what you’re cooking from the time they begin to communicate.

 

Kids Cooking Activities offers up reasons why you should encourage cooking activities with your kids. (Set up link at underlining to http://www.kids-cooking-activities.com)

 

* Cooking with your children helps them to learn about nutrition and healthy eating. 

* Cooking in the kitchen will give children a boost of self confidence. They are accomplishing a task, learning something important, and contributing to the family.

* Taking time to cook with your kids will give them lasting memories. They will pass the traditions on when they are grown and have their own families.

* In the enthusiasm of creating something themselves, your children will be more likely to eat what they had a hand in making.

* Kids learn real lessons in science, language, math, and creativity in the kitchen. Cooking will help reinforce all these subjects.

* Cooking is a great way to learn life skills. This is especially helpful when children are older and more independent. They won't have to rely on fast food and junk food to sustain them.

* Working together in the kitchen teaches your child teamwork.

* Cooking teaches children planning and making choices skills.

* Kids practice creativity and imagination in the kitchen. Cooking activities are a great way for kids to express themselves and enjoy their creations.  

 

It may take longer to get the meal or snack done, but the moments with your children will be priceless. Remember to have patience. Don't worry about flour on the floor or spilled milk.

 

A role model for cooking with kids

 

Cooking With Kids, a series of 90-second videos, is hosted by James Beard Award-winning chef John Sarich. Development of the program was inspired by the reality of childhood obesity, anorexia and other eating disorders, Type II Diabetes, and low bone density, which have all become national issues. Cooking With Kids encourages parents and children to spend time in the kitchen together preparing healthy meals in ways that improve communication and help children develop healthy nutritional habits. (Set up link at underlining to http://www.cookingwithkids.org/fact.html)

 

The program shows how easy it is for kids to prepare snacks and meals that taste good and that are good for them. It uses the five food groups as a platform for nutrition messages. You can watch the videos with your children through the website, then print out the recipe and go try it yourselves.

 

The recipes that Sarich prepares with kids on the segments teach them which categories on the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Pyramid are included in the recipe. He explains how vegetable burritos, for example, include foods that have protein, fiber and dairy, and that the burritos are low in fat.

 

Good cooking habits

 

Spatulatta provides 350 step-by-step videos that teach kids good cooking habits, and offers advice for moms, dads and kids on numerous issues related to cooking with kids. It emphasizes topics like teaching kids to wash their hands properly before handling food.  (Set up link at underlining to http://www.spatulatta.com)

 

When it comes to working in the kitchen, you know your children. You know what abilities they have and how fine their motor skills are. Some children are ready to handle a certain kitchen utensil or work at the stove earlier than others. It’s up to you to make that determination.

 

You set the rules in your kitchen, such as you will always light the burners and oven for your children.

 

Go over the workings of every electrical appliance with your child. Explain that the beaters, for example, should be inserted into a hand mixer before the mixer is plugged in.

 

Safety and courtesy are behaviors that need to be re-enforced and modeled.

 

Once you've explained how to handle an item safely, try asking your child to tell you how to do it the next time the task is required when making a recipe. We all learn best when we try to teach.

 

 

CREDIT:

Christina DiMartino has been a freelance and assignment writer since 1985. She is a researcher, interviewer, writer, editor, and manuscript collaborator with a repertoire of clients from around the world.

 

 

PHOTO / ILLUSTRATION RECOMMENDATIONS:

Go to http://www.cookingwithkids.org

 

 

TEASER: 

Cooking with your kids does much more than produce tasty treats! It teaches teamwork, safety, courtesy, math, science, and more, and encourages creativity and imagination. And there are some terrific online videos that will help you get started.

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