by Jane Laird
CATALYST has sleuthed out some creative offerings to help your children love their young summers.
I have noticed that the mention of children and summer together causes most adults to shift their mind’s eye for a moment to their own recollections of that golden season. Summertime seems to codify memories. For children it’s the defined, set time that you don’t have to go to school—a glorious and heightened shift in kidhood reality. This long school-less vacation generates more trips, more freedom, more holidays or sometimes even more boredom than the rest of the year seems to do. Perhaps the primary purpose of a child’s summer is to generate those memories that we find ourselves decanting in adulthood, when the topics of summer and youth comes up together. The good news is that this summer there is a vast variety of structured and unstructured choices for generating wonderful childhood experiences, and thus future memories. As you know, families can take advantage of the natural splendor of Utah and vacation time access to the usual sport clinics and day camps. In addition, some distinctive and offbeat avenues for parents of school-aged youth are worth exploring. Not only are there well-regarded Girl Scout summer camps, there are also venues for your child to be Hamlet, too. You can have it all when it comes to helping your children love their young summers, specifically their summer of 2010. Below are just a few of the unique local adventures available to jump start your thinking—see the accompanying resource listing for contact information.