Abstract:

The offer of summer camps in the Basque Country is diverse and a substantial number of Basque boys and girls aged between 6 and 12 years attend to them annually. The activities carried out in these summer camps might contribute to the children´s knowledge on Natural Sciences and their attitude about them. Considering the Basque Compulsory Education curriculum promotes constructivism and thus a child centred learning process, the children´s previous knowledge about different aspects of Natural Sciences and their attitude toward them can have an impact on their teaching-learning process in the school. Thus, it is an issue of interest for the educators what the children learn in those summer camps and to what extent, if any, it agrees with the formal curriculum.
Therefore, in this work, some of the activities carried out in the camps have been analysed from the perspective of the objectives of Natural Sciences in the official Primary Education curriculum. The descriptions of the activities that corresponded to summer camps in the Basque Country longer than five days were collected from internet. Such were those offered by the Provincial Councils, the Basque Summer Camps organized by the School Association Zirimola, and the Basque Scouts.
It has been observed that the objectives of the activities in the summer camps sometimes agree with the objectives of Natural Sciences in the school. In fact, the activities proposed by the Provincial Council, and the associations Zirimola and Scouts responded to at least half of the objectives described at the curriculum. Among them, the most frequently observed by the summer camp organizations, are “paying attention to the natural environment features” and “analysing the effects of human intervention on the environment”. On the other hand, it has been observed that contents and competencies regarding "Matter and energy" and technology have been scarce.

Keywords:

Leisure, curriculum, non formal education, Primary Education, summer camps.