Welcome
Welcome to Magischola Prep, a unique summer camp experience for teens and tweens. As you’re likely aware if you’re considering an overnight camp for your child, summer camp is an important experience for adolescents. Going away from home for a week has the following benefits:
- helps to establish independence
- introduces campers to new friends from outside their everyday life and school setting
- helps young people build competence and confidence, as they use their bodies and minds in new and challenging ways and overcome physical, social, and emotional challenges
- immerses them in a supportive environment that focuses on teamwork, encouragement, integrity and excellence
- forms bonds with other campers as they live, work, play, and create together
- creates fantastic memories of fun and friendship, and stories to tell.
Like Typical Summer Camp
Magischola Prep is in many ways like a “typical” summer camp. It runs for a week, divides students into groups who live together and bond as a unit, employs counselors and staff to mentor and support participants, has a structured day, afternoon, and evening activities that participants choose among, students sleep overnight in dorms and eat together in groups, and there is a focus on personal growth through fun.
But not …
Magischola Prep is definitely *not* your typical summer camp though, with canoeing and archery and wilderness skills. Magischola Prep is an immersive magical experience, where your student steps outside the mundane world of their everyday life and becomes a wizard-in-training for a week, inhabiting a parallel universe of the Magimundi, a universe where magic is real.
Magischola Prep accomplishes all of the benefits that an outdoor or adventure summer camp does. It just does them a bit differently, in an immersive experience where your child gets to try on another identity and make a difference in a magical world that has some of the same problems our everyday one has: bullying, acceptance, poverty, scarcity of resources, and mistreatment.
The Power of Acting or Roleplay
Stepping outside of one’s mundane life and into a world where you can do magic stimulates the imagination, fosters creative thinking, and empowers your student to try new things that they might not otherwise. Acting and roleplay provide an alibi for behaving differently than you might otherwise, and playing together means that the social risks inherent in everyday middle school or high school life are set aside. Not only can you test out what it feels like to speak up about a bully, but you also live it as real with your body and mind. These memories stay with you long after the event and permeate into your daily life. Roleplay and simulation are so powerful that corporations, government organizations, educational organizations, and the military use it frequently.
A unique approach
As a long-time educator and parent of three, I wanted to found Magischola Prep to be a different summer camp experience for those who for personal or medical reasons aren’t interested or able to do the treks through the mountains or across lakes. We’ve combined an instructional, physical, and theatrical background to create a fun and all-encompassing enrichment camp experience that emphasizes the arts and humanities. It’s learning with an alibi. Playing wizard helps your student develop empathy, perspective-taking, and social skills that will help them be more successful in their everyday lives.
Plus, it’s one heck of a good time. You’ll be regaled with the stories for weeks afterward. Wow! Actual conversation with your teen or tween about their experiences! Magischola Prep really is magic.