Summer Camp: why camp

Showing posts with label why camp. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

In a word: Relationships

A word cloud formed from blogs on the value of overnight camp for campers and counselors conveys the essence of camp, and perhaps, of life—relationships.

Relationships with friends and campers and counselors, and yes with parents too.

Relationships with counselors who live in the moment and serve as valuable role models for children.

Relationships among campers who learn and grow to meet their potential, who arrive with trepidation and leave camp with memories and lives changed through the relationships they form each summer.

Relationships between children and parents who give the gift of summer camp knowing a child can gain more self-confidence and responsibility in a few weeks of summer fun than nearly anywhere else in life.

Look into an overnight summer camp experience for your child this year.

The blogs on which this cloud are based:

Monday, January 24, 2011

Questions to Ask When Selecting a Summer Camp

Now is the time to start planning for summer camp. There are numerous camp fairs in February and March. Check out http://www.acacamps.org/camp-fairs for a list of fairs throughout the country. Many camps also host gatherings for current and prospective campers around the country, so check out the web sites of camps you are considering to see what gatherings they have planned.

There are many excellent overnight camps for children that are ACA accredited. To find the right camp for your child consider both what you and your child are looking for in a summer camp experience as well as camp foundations. Does your child have a particular interest that he or she wants to pursue—overnight hiking trips, a particular sport, an artistic interest? How close or far from home are you willing to send your child to camp and for how long? Are you looking for a girls camp, boys camp or a coed camp? When evaluating the camp foundations look at the camp values, the staff to camper ratio, the tuition, returning campers and staff.

As you are considering alternative camps for your child be sure to meet the directors of prospective camps and ideally also talk with parents of current campers. You can learn a lot about a camp from the attitude of current parents. Following are some questions that may help you get started in a conversation.

For a conversation with camp parents

1. Why did you send your child to this camp?

2. Did your child have any transitional issues at camp?

3. What were the best elements of camp for your child?

4. What was most difficult for your child at camp?

5. What did your child learn at camp?

6. Did your child make any new friends at camp?

For a conversation with camp directors

1. Are you ACA accredited?

2. What are the camp values?

3. How long has the camp been operating and how long have you directed the camp?

4. What is the staff to camper ratio?

5. How many campers and staff return year to year?

6. How long are the camp sessions and how many sessions do most campers attend?

7. What are your visitation policies for parents?

8. What activities are offered?

9. How much choice do the campers have in which activities to pursue?

What else would you want to know about a camp before sending your child? What do you wish you had known about a camp before you sent your child?

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Preserving Camp Memories

As the days shorten, think about encouraging your camper to collect photos and mementos from camp to put together in a scrapbook. The first step is uploading the photos from the camera to the computer! The longer the photos stay on the camera, the greater the risk they will be lost.

Once the photos are available there are a myriad of options to choose from both on-line and in multi-format scrapbooks.

Online service providers including MobileMe (for Mac users), Picasa Web Albums, Shutterfly.com and many others that provide free formats for online photo albums that can be shared.
Online retailers including MobileMe, Shutterfly.com, myphotoalbum.com that produce soft and hard bound books in addition to online photo albums.
A scrapbook into which photos and other mementos can be affixed
Photos sleeves put into a 3 ring binder and filled with photos

The quickest to produce and share with friends are free, on-line web albums. The privacy of the online album can be set so you can select who can view it and even supply a password for viewing.

If you want an album in your bookshelf or sitting out to page through, then most of the online albums can easily be transformed into a hardbound album. The cost for these albums range depending on the number of pages and whether the book is soft or hard bound. A typical hard bound book generally starts at $30, but there are often promotions be run be different sites so it is worth waiting for a discount before ordering.

Hard bound photo albums take more time to create which can be a fun project for a cold, rainy weekend. Make sure you purchase acid free supplies (album, paper, glue, stickers) to ensure the photos won’t deteriorate excessively. Hard bound albums also can more easily accommodate non-digital mementos such as a ribbon won or a cabin list.

And for the traditionalist, there are always photo sleeves. Photo sleeves are 3 hole punched format plastic sleeves that can hold 4 or 6 4x6 photos. These can be purchased at stores like Walmart, Target and Staples. Slip them into a 3 ring binder and you have a very quick and easy hardbound photo book.

Regardless of the format chosen, have your camper write down names of cabinmates, counselors, places, and other names to accompany the photos. If he or she is really inspired, your camper may want to write a few short memories of specific camp events— the final baseball game, the 4 day camping trip, cooking s’mores for the first time.

What suggestions do you have for preserving camp memories?

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Calling the Camp Director

You’ve just received a distressing letter from your camper—she’s homesick, or a cabin-mate has been teasing her, or she’s never been picked to captain a team. Or you see a photo on the camp website and her hair looks like a rat’s nest—does it ever get combed? Should you call the camp? Call your camper? Write her a letter? Send an email?

With the explosion of communication between camp, camper and parents, it’s not uncommon for a parent to quickly place a phone call or send an email every time a concern is raised. Certainly it’s important to raise issues that may have gone unnoticed or unresolved. Sometimes it’s necessary simply to calm your own parental anxiety.

However, before sending that email or placing the call, put the incident in perspective. Her hair is a mess in a photo? Is it a mess in every photo? Are you usually the one who reminds her to comb her hair before school or combs out the tangles for her? Would it be beneficial if she could learn to brush her hair herself? Are there significant health or safety concerns if her hair continues to be tangled?

Perhaps your daughter has written you about being teased. Teasing can often go undetected beyond the tormentor and the target. Such a situation may well warrant a calm phone call to the director to discuss what your daughter has written as well as to listen to what the director has heard from the cabin counselors. Remember that every communication should be two-way—air your concern, but also listen to what else has occurred and how the situation may already be resolved.

This is particularly true for homesickness. A homesick incident written on a Tuesday, mailed on a Wednesday and not received by you until Friday may be entirely forgotten before the letter was even in transit. A composed phone call with the director can help calm your anxiety and offer you additional insight into how your daughter is currently faring. Most camp directors have dealt with a variety of homesick campers and have been trained in strategies to best manage each individual’s situation. Raising your concerns with the director can be helpful for you, your daughter and her counselors.

Also keep in mind that every camp has its own policy on communication between the camper and parents. Many camps work to keep camper phone calls at a minimum, if they are allowed at all, as phone calls can be disruptive to the child’s camp experience and inhibit the child’s independence and self-confidence. So more often than not, if you have a significant concern about your child’s well-being, it is far better to contact the camp office rather than your camper.

There are unquestionably times to contact the camp and the camp directors want to ensure that your daughter is experiencing the fullness of camp. On the other hand, camp is also about learning independence, self-confidence and new skills. A new skill may be learning how to shoot an arrow, or it may be how to brush your hair yourself, make your bed or get along living in close quarters with others. So when an issue arises, take a moment before calling the camp office or sending an email and put your concern in perspective.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Taking a Daughter to Camp

Preparing for my daughter’s summer at camp was easy; meeting the reality of a good-bye was exceedingly difficult. I wanted a bear hug and “I’ll miss you Mama.” She wanted a quick hug and a kiss and a chance to melt into the new found group of girls.

It seemed the snow bank was still knee high at the end of our driveway the day she began packing her trunk. Each afternoon after completing her homework, she’d ask, “Can I go up and pack now?” The first several times she asked, I quizzically responded, “But your trunk is packed.” “Not the new underwear you bought me,” she’d reply. Or, “I have a newly sharpened pencil to pack.” And so it went for an entire month of anticipation. Each day pulling everything out and rearranging the entire contents as the newly acquired item always seemed to need to be packed on the bottom of the trunk.

The day before we were to drop her off, she became very quiet. Perhaps the reality was beginning to settle on her. By lunch the day we drove to camp, her vocabulary had diminished to “No thank you” and “I’m not hungry.” I made her favorite meal for lunch— she managed to eek one noodle from her fork to her mouth before uttering, “I’m not hungry.” The butterflies were gathering.

When we got to camp the first stop was a check in with the nurse. The nurse, being friendly, asked what my daughter was looking forward to doing at camp this summer. “Making a friend,” was her quiet reply. Tears filled my eyes; this would certainly be a difficult good-bye. Would she make a friend? Would she be happy? Would her counselor put her covers back on when they fell off at night?

At her cabin she selected her bunk without any fuss and although I wanted to help her unpack and get settled, she simply wanted to change into her uniform and head to the playground with 2 other girls in her cabin. I worried when she only put one blanket on her bed (it gets cold in Maine at night!). I wanted to arrange the photos that she had brought from home and hang up her laundry bag and bathing suits and towel. She quickly changed, selecting footwear to match her cabin mates and headed out as a camper. We followed, her sister and father and I, and although we were close behind we watched her move farther and farther from us, finding her own way, understanding the need to belong and looking for a way to belong.

How did your drop off go? Who had the most difficult time saying good-bye?