The girls have toured the Eiffel Tower and ogled the stone majesties of the Pantheon. They have swooned over the Jonas Brothers, giggled over wax likenesses of their parents and romped with friends at Camp David, all in the span of two blissfully school-free months. Welcome to Sasha and Malia Obama's fabulous summer vacation, a hodgepodge of foreign travel, concerts, birthday parties and just plain fun carefully organized by the president and first lady. (The first lady has dubbed it Camp Obama.) But the nation's camp counselors in chief have also tried to ensure that this first summer in the White House is about more than lighthearted fare. President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, have incorporated history lessons, community service, and healthy eating and exercise into their daughters' time off, offering yet another glimpse of the parenting style behind the walls at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The Obamas discussed the slave trade with their girls during a visit to a slave port in Ghana. They focused on volunteering at Fort McNair in Virginia, where the girls helped stuff backpacks with books and toys for the children of military families. In Rome, they arranged for Malia and Sasha to make gelato and to see how fresh fruit -- bananas and blackberries, in particular -- can be transformed into mouthwatering sweetness. The Obamas are sticklers for emphasizing structure and discipline in their child-rearing. Summertime, they have made clear, provides no respite from the rules. 'The television and the computers are off all day until after dinner and right before bedtime,' Michelle Obama said during a June visit to San Francisco as she described her daughters' summer routine. 'Bedtime is early.' (This is no easy task, though, even in the Obama household. Obama acknowledged last month that her girls were often glued to their computers: 'What would we do without our laptops? My kids would die. They wouldn't make it through the summer.') Some critics say the Obamas' far-flung family travels are inappropriate at a time of recession. But friends and aides say the Obamas view the nation and the world at large as an open-air classroom for their children, who have met Pope Benedict XVI and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and witnessed the rhythms of life in a developing country like Ghana, all in one summer. 'They want to expose their children to make sure they appreciate the complexity of the world, to see the wonderful opportunities that occur, but also some of the suffering that is at hand,' said Charles J. Ogletree, a law professor at Harvard and a close friend of the Obamas. 'It will help them, as they get older, to understand how the United States has a moral obligation to think about other people,' Ogletree said. In a television interview with CNN last month, the president described the visit to the slave port in Ghana as an opportunity to explain to Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, how 'people were willing to degrade others because they appeared differently.' In the interview, the president said he tried to get his girls to 'engage in the imaginative act of what it would be like if they were snatched away from Mom and Dad and sent to some place they had never seen before.' 'But, you know, part of what you also try to do with kids is to get them to imagine themselves on the other side, as being the slave merchant,' Obama said. 'And get them to -- to make sure that they are constantly asking themselves questions about whether they are treating people fairly and -- and whether they are examining their own behavior and how it affects others.' Doug Wead, a former Bush family adviser and the author of 'All the Presidents' Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America's First Families,' said several presidents had traveled abroad with their children, including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. (Laura Bush, the former first lady, went to Africa with her daughter Jenna while George W. Bush was president.) Still, not everyone is cheering the Obamas on. Last month, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said the president had some 'nerve' to be sightseeing in Paris while insisting that Congress should focus on overhauling health care. John Baer, a columnist at The Philadelphia Daily News, recently pondered what parents who have lost their jobs and been forced to cancel their family vacations would make of the president's plans to savor some family time in Martha's Vineyard this month. 'Those who view Obama as an elitist will have new ammunition,' Baer wrote. Obama's aides emphasize that the president and the first lady cover the costs of any personal travel and that the stresses of the presidency make such breaks essential. The Obamas have made a point of getting their children out of the White House bubble this summer -- taking them to cheer on Beyonce in concert here; to visit Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia; and to spend lazy summer afternoons at Camp David. In Moscow, where Malia and Sasha toured the Kremlin, Obama told CNN he was thrilled to watch his daughters 'see the world and then report back to us on what they are seeing.' In Ghana, Michelle Obama and her girls, who are descendants of slaves, placed two red roses in the slave dungeons and paused for a moment of silence for the people who were imprisoned there, said Fritz Baffour, a member of Ghana's Parliament who helped guide the family through the Cape Coast Castle. 'Michelle Obama told me that the experience was an educational experience for her children,' Baffour said in a telephone interview from Ghana. 'This was a great opportunity to give the children a sense of their being, their true worth and their history.' 