The American summer camp program is an epitome of almost every American children’s summer adventure.  During the months of June-Aug, Americans send their children from as young as 6 years old to overnight summer camps that last as long as 2-7 weeks. The Summer Camp is regarded as a “must-do”, “get the kids off gadgets and technology” and “the perfect place for children to build resilience, learn life skills and help children to optimize their psychosocial development”. 
 

Since Malaysia gets “summer” weather the whole year round, Camp MAE has decided to do another summer camp at the end of the year called the Winter Solstice Camp.  The Winter Solstice Camp at Camp M.A.E. is a 1 week overnight camp where children get to enjoy the outdoor nature and environment and engage in fun-filled activities that are both educational and life-changing for the children.  Following an organized and structured itinerary, the Winter Solstice camp at Camp M.A.E offers a variety of activities from baking classes to arts and crafts to a huge range of sports activities that children could choose from.  This structured schedule is developed to encourage children to be disciplined and to learn boundaries.  The main concept behind this long camp program is to encourage children to develop independence skills – to be away from the comfort of their home and learn to take care of oneself.  The Winter Solstice camp encourages children to pick up different life-skill sets like developing teamwork and learning to work with a group of people to complete a task; develop one’s leadership skills; build one’s problem solving skills and critical thinking skills; encourage children to learn about responsibilities and build one’s resilient, giving them the ability to adapt to our fast changing world; build one’s socialisation skills and learn the basic concept of “compromise” and “give and take” while living with a group of different children with different culture and background.  

At Camp M.A.E. our daily schedule encompasses a variety of activities that are physically, mentally and socially challenging.  During the morning session, children choose from a list of available activities that they want to do on a daily basis, and these activities are either done in a group or individually. These activities change daily so as to encourage children to try and learn as many new things as possible. During the afternoon session, there will be team challenges whereby children team up to complete tasks and challenges that are given to them.  We finish off the day with activities like campfire, games night or movie night to encourage children to socialise and promote bonding time with one another.  This is the best time for children to get to make new friends and to learn more about each other.