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This is our third season of running the camps - our first two in 2008 and 2009 were enormously popular. So how does Tech Camp work? At each camp, we run a number of concurrent courses, organised by an "academic"; usually a scientist, engineer or teacher. Each 5-day camp has 5 different courses running concurrently. The children (and parents!) can choose which camp they attend, but once that decision has been made, all children undertake all courses on offer at that particular camp. This is for a number of reasons; to be honest, it is much easier for us to organise it this way, but there are other reasons as well - we put an enormous amount of effort into ensuring that all courses are stimulating, and the children typically find that they enjoy all of the courses on offer. This also allows us to expose all of the children to a wide range of science & technology topics. On the first day, the residential campers arrive a little earlier than anyone else, and are shown around the school, and settled into their dormitory. We all meet together at 9:15am on the first day and explain (briefly) how things work, before going straight into our courses. A typical day might go as follows : | Early | Early waking campers come down to dining hall for some ‘reverse-engineering’! | | 8:00am | Wakeup | | 8:30am | Breakfast | | 8:45am | Day campers start arriving | | 9:15-9:30am | Courses start (2x1 hour sessions before lunch, with 30min break between for snacks & games) | | 12:00pm-1pm | Lunch | | 1pm | Afternoon courses (3x1 hour sessions, again with 30 minute breaks between) | | 5pm | Courses finish | | 5:10pm | Day campers pick-up | | 5:30pm | Showers | | 6pm-7pm | Supper | | 7:00pm-8:30pm | Evening Activities | | 9:00pm | Late stay day campers pick-up Residential campers brush teeth and get ready for bed |
One of the sessions is a 'Time-out' slot, where the children get a chance to run around and expend some energy in an organised but fun games session. All of the other sessions are the "academic" technology-based activities. A great deal of thought is put into our night activities as well, both to offer something slightly different for the residential campers, and also to give them something active to do before bed-time, which minimises home-sickness. Some of our day campers will join us for our night-time activities as well. We only employ staff who are known to us (or recommended to us) personally, and who are throughoughly reference-checked (and of course CRB checked) as well, and we make an even greater effort with the residential staff to ensure that all are highly experienced in a boarding environment, and able to make even the most nervous child feel at ease. At the end of the week, there is a brief time for parents to have a look around the camp and see what activities the children have been involved with. We then have a finale, (which typically involves some high-powered rockets being fired!), and then all depart.
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