Summer Camps in the Czech Republic

With summer feeling like it is right on top of us, you might be wondering what is on offer to keep your kids amused through July and August. Czech kids are pretty well-catered for in this department with a range of activities from outdoor sports to music and language. But what about the younger expat set? What’s on offer for them? No worries, there are a range of camps to suit the tastes of both your creatively inclined offspring as well as your budding sporting types.

Justin Osswald, one of the camp leaders, says the camp attracts a large mix of children from around the world, including Georgia, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Japan, Korea, the USA and of course the Czech Republic. With such a diverse mix of nationalities, English is the common tongue among the kids.

“The kids are very responsible and very inclusive. From my experience they don’t form cliques. Not from what I’ve seen. In fact, the Czech kids go out of their way to invite the foreign kids to take part in their activities,” Osswald says.

This would suit kids for whom neither English nor Czech are a first language and who need to brush up on those language skills. According to Osswald, the camp has included children from Germany, Russia and Georgia.

Apart from cycling, the campers are taken through all the principals of bike care, first aid and road awareness. The intention of the latter is to ensure they will be able to handle their bicycle with higher safety. One of the team leaders, Jan Březík, says the children respond well to this training and are very enthusiastic to learn as much as they can.

Safety is a keyword with the cycling club and the group’s representative and Březík shared some of their procedures. The groups ride in single file with a leader at the front and one at the rear. When crossing intersections, Březík explained that one leader stops traffic coming from the left and a second stops the traffic on the right while the first leader guides the children around the corner. All the children are equipped with brightly colored vests and helmets are a must. A support car accompanies the children on the cycling trips with food, water and first aid supplies.

But it’s not all biking. The kids also have the opportunity to go canoeing and play games. Plus there is a camp Olympics held every year. For the non-English speaking kids there are English lessons, but Březík said that as more English speaking kids join, the program will change to accommodate them and there may be less of a need for lessons.

Art is not the only activity at Art Mill. They focus also on the environment and sustainable living. Benish was keen to point out, “Since we have a small farm here, the kids are able to experience what it is to grow ones own food, and be able to pick things fresh from the garden. We pass on the value of protecting and caring for the nature around us, which is really about community and world co-operation.”

The camp also takes a bilingual approach to language with English for those who want to learn or Czech for the non-Czech speakers. This year they are also hoping to run Italian and Chinese. All the language courses are run by native speakers.

Signing up for this camp means seven days of quite intensive training with a typical day comprising of one and half hours of training on ice from 9am, followed by an hour and fifteen minutes of dry land exercise, which can include drills and other sports as well as hockey theory. Then it’s lunch and some r’n’r before heading back to the ice at 3pm for another hour and a half. English is the official language of the camp.

The principal, Vanessa Gendron, stressed that the school program was oriented to occur outside as much as possible, which she felt was the main difference between this and other programs. “The children get a real experience of nature. The camp is definitely for the young nature and art lover. We even aim to make them ecologically aware”

Ecology at this age? How is it possible? “We try to make the children conscious of recycling, composting and just generally taking care of the natural environment. Whenever we go to Divoká Šarka, for example to the swimming pool, we and the kids clean up, and the kids love it. We also have a garden where they learn to appreciate how to care for plants. Because there are a lot of snails here, the children have to protect the plants from them. But they learn to do it in a humane and eco-friendly way. Some kids even adopt the snails as pets. There is also a goat, so they learn how to care for larger animals as well.”