Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness...
Autumn can be a glorious time of the year, with the turning of the leaves, the cooler days, Halloween celebrations and that excitement building up to Christmas. However, the autumn half term can be somewhat of a fly in your organisational soup. The glow of the summer holidays has faded, school has started again and parents are back in full flow at work. So what do you do with the kids in that rather ill timed, 2 weeks period of Autumn half term?
You have probably taken off as much time from work as you can (although there are always sick days to be used!), even if you do have extra days to be used the weather in most of Europe has already started to deteriorate and any trips to warmer climes will be quite pricey. The kids are just starting to get back into the full swing of the school-time routine (waking up before 8, having a full day of lessons, spending less than 5 hours a day on their computers/tablets, doing homework, getting to sleep at a decent time at night), and so you don’t really want to disrupt this pattern if it can be avoided.
The Autumn half term can actually be an excellent time to explore some of Switzerland’s hidden treasures, or take delight in the Swiss countryside, parks and scenery. “And so how do we take advantage of all of this whilst we are at work?” i hear you ask. Two words. Autumn Camps.
These are not as well known as the Summer Camps, but are an excellent way to keep the kids entertained and occupied in a fairly structured day, whilst not having the rigidity of a school day and allowing more opportunity for spontaneous play (it is the holidays afterall!).
Unlike summer camps these are not sleepover camps and the children return home every day at the end of the day. No matter what your child’s interests are, there will be camps which will cater to them,be it arts and crafts, sports, chess, IT, with a lot of the focus being on teamwork and social skills. These may be deemed as soft skills but the camps really assist in building of confidence, making new friends or catching up with friends you haven’t seen in a while, and developing the maturity to behave with less oversight from grownups.
No matter what your child's interests are, we have  camp recommendations that will engage them in activities that require teamwork. Knowing how to work in a team is a useful skill for life.
Chess4kids- offers exciting vacation camps for children 5 years and older, and they are the bests for kids camps in chess. They offer both half day or full day activities depending on your preference, and the classes and activities are a mixture of chess (beginner and advanced)Â plus fun and interactive activities such as magic art, dance, football, music, The camps run Monday to Friday 9am-4pm.
https://chess4kids.ch/en/feriencamps-horgen-kusnacht-wollishofen-oerlikon-zug-kinder-ab-5-jahren/
Spark Science: offer camps that ignite a passion for learning scientific enquiry, as well as developing English skills. The focus in these camps is for kids to make new friends, develop confidence in their abilities, and to get to try out a wide selection of sporting activities. Their October camp has a Halloween focus and so you can expect scary costumes, spooky slime and much more. The camps run from Mon 14th to 18th October from 9am until 5pm for ages 5- 11.
TechSpark: is a technology focused camp and runs courses to allow kids to develop their coding and IT skills. For all those budding Mark Zukerbergs out there, this could be the camp for you. Kids are spending a lot of time on their computers, so they may as well pick up the skills they are going to need for the future. Their October camp runs from Oct 7th to 10th and has courses in Aritificial Intelligence, coding in Python, Hacker mode and Animation and Game Design. There are some early bird discounts for early registration.
Intersoccer: are running half day autumn camps in multiple locations from 21st-25th Oct, for players who may have just started playing football. It is open to boys and girls ages 3-13.
https://www.intersoccer.ch/autumn-soccer-camps/mini-autumn-camps/
So this Autumn half term, don't fret, get the kids into camp for a week or two. They will be entertained for the whole time and you won't have to use up any precious holiday days
Recommended Camps - Zurich
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