Havent read the full thread but here is my thoughts,
My niece is going to her annual drama summer residential for the 5th year running, she saves money from presents and babysitting and extra chores to fund this and we also give her spending money and usually give her a shopping spree before or after. This year the residential will cost 410 euro from Saturday lunchtime till Friday afternoon. Its intense, exhausting but she has an absolute ball and is buzzing the whole time as we can tell by her social media updates.
During the school year she chooses to attend 2 different drama schools to hone different skills so on a weekly basis, her dad picks up the bill for those which works out at £25 for the Tuesday evening one as its professional training and working towards exams. He also does about 60 miles extra driving to facilitate her doing this.
On a Saturday during the school year, she travels from the town where she lives to the city and then across the city to train with national drama group. This is at a high cost as well, food while she is out and extra money so she can use to sit in a cafe or somewhere for safety, phone credit so she can call for help if needed, bus fares (45e approx - 2.5 hours each way) as well as the cost of the classes she attends while she is there
She is much loved, she looks forward to the residential all year meeting up with old friends and making new ones, we all know she will sleep flat out for 2/3 days when she returns and then she will tell us about it, not a lot of sleep usually has taken place
As a child i went to a summer scheme once in the local town, it was on for 6 hours a day for 5 days a week, i wasnt keen on it but it was down to me rather than them as they had loads of activities happening - i think i was about 10
However when i was 11, i went to a residential week long camp which was spilt into 2 parts, the first part was sat-weds staying in college dorms and having use of local college sports facilities which were some of the best in the country at that time, and then on the wednesday we packed up and moved to a little inlet off a river where there was barges moored and we all had to bunk into sleepers in the barges and there was a hotel about 50 metres away where we had all our meals - on the sat morning finally packed up again and returned back to where the leaders had picked us up a week before and they took another 2 busloads of children off for an adventure.
I do however remember 2 american boys, this was the very first week of the camp i was there and they were booked to stay till the last week, so had 8 weeks of camp.
That camp changed my life in a couple of ways one of them being that i was a very shy quiet timid girl before going away, however we were all grouped together according to our ages and at that point i was 11, there was 11 more 11 year olds, who were all boys and we all were at the stage were "we might catch cooties" but i learned very quickly to speak up and made my voice heard and since then ive never shut up, -
the length of this message is testament to that lol
What im saying op it may be more beneficial for the child to do the camps, they are also seeing their parent in the afternoon which is still an ok time to do something together if desired