Summer Literacy Camps Drive Steady Increase in School Readiness

All children have potential. Not all children have opportunity.

Caira is a delightful five-year-old girl who always lights up a room.

Her parents brought her to Camp Fire USA’s summer day camp in 2017 for some fun and educational summer activities.

Although Caira already attended a preschool program, Camp Fire staff found that she did not possess the skills needed to be successful in kindergarten. She lacked skills in letter formation, alphabet recognition, decoding, phonological awareness and number recognition.

During the summer camp, Camp Fire staff and volunteers from AmeriCorp Polk Reads worked together to develop a plan to help Caira improve in all the areas she was lacking.

The team utilized the Reading A-Z literacy program to prepare her for the reading skills she would need in kindergarten and worked on age-approbate math activities and games to improve math comprehension.

Camp Fire is able to offer this Childhood Education and Mentoring Program to many children a year thanks to funds from United Way of Central Florida.

Caira was challenged to do more and take on more difficult concepts. There were roadblocks and even a little frustration but she became engaged, motivated and excited to learn new things. The program didn’t just teach her the academic skills she needed, but she learned confidence in herself.

Caira was able to write all the letters of the alphabet, perform the sounds they made, count to 30, understand patterns and do simple addition and subtraction by the end of the nine-week program. She also learned how to stand in a line, raise her hand to ask a question and work with other children.

But her story does not end there.

Caira is currently enrolled in Camp Fire’s after-school STEAM Team and, after only four months into kindergarten, she is reading on-level, excelling in math and has straight A’s on her report card.

United Way | Education