Hey, Camp Seekers!
March Mondays are all about how to ‘Choose the Right Camp’. Naturally, you want camp to be a wonderful experience for your soon-to-be-camper. Selecting the right camp has a lot to do with what they get out of the experience. Our March Blog series about how to choose the right camp is using valuable information that can be found in the indispensable guidebook ‘The Summer 
Camp Handbook,’—written by camp experts, Dr. Chris Thurber and Dr. Jon Malinowski.
In the previous two Mondays of March, we’ve covered the questions ‘Where do you want to go to camp?’ and, last week, ‘How long do you want to stay at camp?’ Today’s question:
DO YOU WANT A SINGLE-SEX OR COED CAMP?
Here are some benefits for both types of summer camp environments.
Single-Sex Camp:
• leaves less room for romantic distractions. When campers leave their concerns about how they come off to the opposite sex allows for a more concentrated experience in personal growth and development of independence.
• Single-sex environments allow campers of the same gender to bond differently than they would otherwise and help each other to reinforce the best things about their gender.
• Staff at a single-sex camp make excellent role models and help to reinforce gender identity for campers.
• Single-sex staff members are less distracted by other staff members of the opposite sex and therefore, naturally more committed to the job.
Coed Camp:
• One of the goals of summer camp is to sharpen social skills with your community which is only fully represented in a coed environment.
• Coed camps are also extremely convenient for families with both boy and girl campers—they offer just one location for dropping off, picking up, and visiting.
• Coed camps could be a great change and healthy exposure to an inclusive and healthy community living experience for kids who attend private, single-sex schools.
You can learn more about the differences between single-sex and coed camps and everything else you need to know for sending your kid off to camp the right way in ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’—check it out right here! Make sure you tune in next Monday for the final question you need to ask yourself when you’re choosing the right camp for your camper: ‘What kind of organization are you looking for?’ As always, thanks for reading.
- John