The language and chess camps, which began four years ago, were started by Riquette Bonne-Smith.

Mrs. Bonne-Smith is the owner and instructor of La Maison Francaise Des Bermudes, a French and Spanish tutoring school. She explained that she feels that these summer camps will help students taking a language in school.

Mrs. Bonne-Smith, who is also a French professor at the Bermuda College, decided that children do not want to be bored when they learn. So she has devised a plan to make her students have fun.

Instead of sitting in a classroom, the students play French or Spanish games.

The teacher of the Spanish class, Maria Aitken, helped her students change a regular English game to a Spanish game.

To learn their colours, the French class coloured balls. When a ball is thrown to you, you must say the colour of it in French. This game is played with at least five balls circulating.

Leo Barbieri, the French teacher, says her class is anticipating some French cuisine which the students will cook.

The newest camp of the group is the Chess Camp. The aim of this particular summer camp is to stimulate the child's thinking patterns.

According to the teacher, chess master Joel Salmon, chess enables a person to vitalise their problem solving skills.

He also says it improves concentration skills, which can be good for a child who has a hard time reading or doing mathematics.

"It helps to better discipline one's life,'' said Mr. Salmon who is also a chess professor in New York. He says learning chess has helped him many times when he needs to organise his thoughts.

Mrs. Bonne-Smith says she is hoping to send at least five students abroad to the Junior Championship Chess Tournament in Spain later this year. She says that Bermuda has not had anyone in this tournament for at least five years and they are hoping to make a great come back.

"The beauty is that the students want to keep coming back,'' she said. "They want to keep advancing.''