SUMMER is not only the perfect time for children to take a break from school work and activities; it is also the best time for them to learn something new. Various groups and companies in Cagayan de Oro City took this chance to launch their own summer workshop classes featuring lectures in various skills like cooking and art crafts.

Enrolling children in summer classes add a whole new set of skills for them to use and maybe even new passions to chase. And since the summer season gives them about two months of being free form school work and other engagements, they can easily follow and learn skills in this short period.

Like what they have been doing for many years, Kagay.anon-based cooking school “Monster Kitchen” Academy has been the center for excellence in the culinary scene in the city. To share this prestige to the younger ones, the culinary and pastry school decided to conceptualize a summer class pastry workshop for children.

This pastry class for children is free and interested participants only have to register to the organizers in the venue to get in. This summer, “Monster Kitchen” will have three sessions of cupcake pastry class at Ayala Centrio Mall every Friday from April 25 to May 5.

These classes will cater more or less thirty children who will be taught by the school's practicing chefs to decorate their cupcakes. For each of the classes, the children will be given two cupcakes each to decorate and bring home.

Aevan Torralba, marketing supervisor of Monster Kitchen Academy's summer workshop, explained that the children will only be taught to decorate their own cupcakes.

At the start of each session Torralba explained, the academy's practicing lecture chefs will demonstrate how the cupcakes will be made from the mixture of ingredients to the actual baking.

By the end of the class, the students will be handed their own cake icing piping decorating bags and will be made to personalize their own cupcakes.

"I have never seen such enthusiasm in a group of children before. All of them wanted to show off their cupcakes and all of them wanted to have a part in the baking process. It was a very fun experience to be with them," said Aya Malbarosa the Monster Kitchen Academy school administrator.

Aside from baking, children can also learn the basics of art and spark their imagination in the art summer workshop by the Dire Husi Initiative. This group which was formally formed in 2008, aims to become a training hub for young artists especially children in the streets who have so little opportunity to show their talents.

For the fifth time, they will once again set up their little space in the Limketkai Mall to impart their art to art enthusiasts through their annual summer workshops. For P4000, Dire Husi will provide 10 continuous sessions of art lectures inclusive of all the materials that the students might need in the entirety of the summer class.

"They will be taught how apply tonal values or shading and compose artworks. The workshop will help the students to acquire skills, the mastery of those skills will depend on the amount of time they will practice in the workshop," Rhyan Casiño the founder of Dire Husi Initiatives said.

The first wave of the summer workshop has recently concluded last April 29 with an art exhibit at the Limketkai Mall. The exhibit aimed to highlight the outputs of the workshop's 35 students. The second wave of the summer workshop will start on May 3 and is still open for registration.

"Summer is a time for alternative learning and can also be a time for local artists to earn by conducting workshops. Dire Husi is grabbing the season to make a livelihood among local talents," Casiño said.

While most people are busy going to the beach having a summer vacation goal, a little learning can also be fun o the side with summer workshops like these.