One of the best ways to increase your income as a piano teacher is to run a summer camp. Whether you’re in the northern or southern hemisphere, school holidays are a great opportunity to increase your income by running special group activities or camps with your studio and so this month is designed to get you thinking about how this could work in your studio.

Welcome to Summer Camp Month!

Even if your summer vacation isn’t until the end of the year (like here in Australia), I know that the ideas and concepts that we’ll be discussing this month will be invaluable for any holiday period or group activity, even if they are months away at the moment. It’s always good to start planning early!

Summer Camp Month

Keep in mind that when we talk about running a “Summer Camp”, we’re not talking about massive 8-10 week programs in remote locations run with a large faculty and hundreds of kids (although that could be fun too)!

You’ll see the huge impact that you can have running a camp of only a few days for a few hours per day with your studio and students in your local area.

As David Cutler explains in the Savvy Music Teacher:

Camps don’t have to require a big upfront investment, yet the return can be significant. Providing variety to your routine, camps allow current students to further their music education while serving as a platform for meeting, impacting and recruiting new ones.

Here’s what you can expect to learn this month:

• Action plans and check lists for creating and running your first Summer Camp
• The business case behind summer camps, how to get started and why you have to try it out
• Hear how other teachers are already benefiting from running camps
• See games and group activities in action
• Work out how to schedule, timetable, choose a theme, decide what activities to run, how to feed people, how much to charge, etc.

To whet your appetite and get you started thinking about holiday and summer camp activities, here are just a few of my favourite online planning resources:

• 100 Summer Camp Themes by Summer Camp Program Director “Moose” Jackson
• I’ve got the blues – a ready-to-use summer camp game with downloads from Melody Payne
• Opening piano mini camp ideas – ideas for the first activity of each day on your camp by Joy Morin
• Summer Camp program ideas – Pinterest Board
• How to Start a Summer Camp – Summer Camp Hub

This month’s Articles and Podcasts

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