Hey, Camp Seekers!
Throughout March, I’ve been posting a series on Mondays about how to ‘Choose the Right Camp’ for your soon-to-be-camper. Today is the last post in the series. I’ve been spilling constructive tips and advice from Dr. Chris Thurber and Dr. Jon Malinowski’s awesome guidebook, ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’ all week and today I’m giving you one last juicy morsel of great advice on the subject of finding the right camp. We’ve talked about ‘Where do you want to go to camp?’, ‘How long do you want to stay at camp?’, and, last week, we asked ‘Do you want a single-sex or coed camp?’ Today’s question:
WHAT KIND OF ORGANIZATION DO YOU WANT?
You want to know what kind of setup a camp has. The two major components to focus on with this question would be the camp’s living quarters as well as the activities they offer. All camps have different types of organizational structure. Some take in 90 campers for their summer sessions while others might take in 400. Some camps have a full day prepared for their campers while other camps give kids complete freedom.
Organization of living quarters
Campers typically share a cabin with other campers of the same age or school grade. This is the probably preferable to a camp that will stick the older kids with the younger kids which can make it awkward or intimidating for a younger camper to change clothes in front of cabin mates. Grouping without consideration toward age will also disrupt cabin leaders’ abilities to pick age-appropriate activities for the whole cabin or for the cabin to develop its own identity.
Organization of activities
All camps do things differently, but many will let their campers pick from a variety of available activities to create their own schedule for each day. Some camps have activities scheduled for nearly every hour while others offer more free, leisurely, and personal time for their campers. Most camps will try to balance the two of these organizational schedules with downtime and time for mandatory activities.
If you found this information or any from my previous posts in this series to be helpful, there’s a lot more where that came from in ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’ available right here at Everything Summer Camp. Check it out for yourself right here! And, as always, thanks for reading.
- John