Hey, Camp Fans!

Looking for the right summer camp for your budding camper? Read today’s (as well as the rest of our Summer Camp Spotlight posts on the Blog) for a great resource of wonderful camps—we work with roughly 250! I’m shining my spotlight on brother and sister camps, today—Towering Pines Boys Camp and Camp Woodland for Girls in Wisconsin’s American Legion State Forest.

Nearby Eagle River, these two camps sit on their own campgrounds that stretch a combined total of more than 530 acres. Providing boys and girls a beautiful, remote environment among Wisconsin pines and birch for over 65 years, these camps are perfect summer stays for your soon-to-be-camper!

Towering Pines and Woodland offer a plethora of varied activities from which their campers choose. Encouraging fun and friends, these camps have encouraged confidence, happiness, and a healthy living throughout generations!

Choose from fun activities at camp like arts and crafts, horseback riding, archery, multi-day hike outing, performing arts, team sports, sailing, water sports, swimming, and more! The options are completely comparable between Towering Pines’ activities and Woodland’s except for Woodland offers gymnastics for girls.

The well-maintained facilities at both brother and sister camp have been established to provide unrivaled recreation and camping opportunities for 100 boys and 70 girls each summer. Boasting their dining hall meals, the campers dig in on the great-tasting food they serve up at camp. All the Towering Pines and Woodland campers and staffers say the meals are to die for!

Growing opportunities and great fun are happening each and every summer at Towering Pines and Camp Woodland for boys and girls just like yours. Look in to either of these camps for yourself to see if they’d be a good match for your son or daughter and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Seekers!

March Mondays are all about how to ‘Choose the Right Camp’. Naturally, you want camp to be a wonderful experience for your soon-to-be-camper. Selecting the right camp has a lot to do with what they get out of the experience. Our March Blog series about how to choose the right camp is using valuable information that can be found in the indispensable guidebook ‘The Summer Camp Handbook,’—written by camp experts, Dr. Chris Thurber and Dr. Jon Malinowski.

In the previous two Mondays of March, we’ve covered the questions ‘Where do you want to go to camp?’ and, last week, ‘How long do you want to stay at camp?’ Today’s question:

DO YOU WANT A SINGLE-SEX OR COED CAMP?

Here are some benefits for both types of summer camp environments.

Single-Sex Camp:
•    leaves less room for romantic distractions. When campers leave their concerns about how they come off to the opposite sex allows for a more concentrated experience in personal growth and development of independence.

•    Single-sex environments allow campers of the same gender to bond differently than they would otherwise and help each other to reinforce the best things about their gender.

•    Staff at a single-sex camp make excellent role models and help to reinforce gender identity for campers.

•    Single-sex staff members are less distracted by other staff members of the opposite sex and therefore, naturally more committed to the job.

Coed Camp:
•    One of the goals of summer camp is to sharpen social skills with your community which is only fully represented in a coed environment.

•    Coed camps are also extremely convenient for families with both boy and girl campers—they offer just one location for dropping off, picking up, and visiting.

•    Coed camps could be a great change and healthy exposure to an inclusive and healthy community living experience for kids who attend private, single-sex schools. 

You can learn more about the differences between single-sex and coed camps and everything else you need to know for sending your kid off to camp the right way in ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’—check it out right here! Make sure you tune in next Monday for the final question you need to ask yourself when you’re choosing the right camp for your camper: ‘What kind of organization are you looking for?’ As always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Campers!

Did you know that every year more than 10 million kids go to summer camp? That’s A LOT of kids! And because everybody and their mothers went to summer camp at some point, it’s not surprising to discover the loads upon loads of famous folks who were summer campers just like you once upon a time. But it was only roughly a decade ago that Ms. Halston Sage went to summer camp.

Born in Los Angeles, Halston traveled courageously far for her summer camp stay. She spent her summer stay on Crescent Lake at Camp Laurel South, near Portland, Maine in the beautiful Sebago Lakes region which includes a great beach and clear waters, sports fields, and pristine woodlands. She discovered a passion for horseback riding and would eventually go on to win awards in horseshows.

The oldest of three, Halston sets a great example for her siblings, showing them how to forage your own career path. She may be new to the show business scene, but this girl is already making a name for herself and has been since she launched her acting career at 18 with the television series ‘How to Rock’ in 2011.

She continued to make appearances and guest star in other shows like ‘The First Time’ as well as Nickelodeon shows ‘Victorious’ and ‘Bucket & Skinner’s Epic Adventures’. And in just a couple years after her breakthrough, she debuted in her first feature film alongside Emma Watson in ‘The Bling Ring’. She worked with Adam Sandler as well in ‘Grown Ups 2’—she likened the set and crew of this filmmaking experience to summer camp.

But that was just the beginning and Halston’s just getting started. Last year she co-starred in ‘Goosebumps’ with Jack Black and she also has a role in ‘Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse’ in which a group of Boy Scouts become heroes when their hometown is overrun with zombies.

With such a charismatic personality and a such a great start, Halston’s career has nowhere to go but up. She also loves to write too. Get the most out of your summer camp stay like Halston did and find out just how much good summer camp can do for you! As always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey there, Camp Shoppers!

We’ve been hard at work over the winter season to make your shopping experience the best it can be. Among plenty of new products, including our innovative and awesome new Designer Trunks with hundreds of available options, our Customer Service crew has made some excellent changes to our website to give our customer a more convenient and considerate store. At the beginning of the month, I announced that we launched our Mobile Site.

Today, I introduce our new Shop-by-Brand feature.
Find this handy feature directly below our ‘Most Popular Picks’ on the homepage of our website or under the main menu options in the top left corner of our mobile site. When you want to shop just a single brand, click the Shop-by-Brand feature for direct access to a page that lists our brands.

Our online store is laid out by departments—our selections of ‘Camping Gear’, ‘Name Labels’, ‘Travel Accessories’ and five others. But the Shop-by-Brand feature is for times that you only want to look through Columbia clothing or Kelty sleeping bags as opposed to perusing our entire selection of boys and girls apparel or our plethora of sleeping bags.

Please note that not all of the brands we carry at Everything Summer Camp are represented in our Shop-by-Brand feature. Criteria to meet for Shop-by-Brand membership relies on A) how many products we carry of a particular brand B) how popular they are among our customers. We included a lot, featuring just shy of 70 brands in this new website feature.

In closing, I invite you to check out our Shop-by-Brand feature to shop exclusively the brand you’re interested in and read our brief summaries of our brand overviews and histories. Enjoy your shopping our website and, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Camp Seekers!

Last week I posted our first installment in our March series all about how to ‘Choose the Right Camp’. This helpful series covers information that we’ve learned from the incredibly informational and easy-reading guidebook, ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’, written by summer camp experts Dr Chris Thurber and Dr. Jon Malinowski. Each installment of this series poses its own question that will help you to narrow your search for the right camp.

Today’s question:

HOW LONG DO YOU WANT TO STAY?

It’s a good idea to focus on a range instead of trying to pinpoint a set amount of days or weeks. Start by asking your kid how long of a stay would be most comfortable. All kids are different—some will prefer to try a week or less, others want a solid two weeks, and some want a whole month or more!

When it comes to approaching your soon-to-be-camper on the topic of the length of their camp stay, you want to be aware of key phrasing when asking certain questions: It’s always helpful to children when you make comparisons when talking about lengths of time. Try to avoid such an open question like, “How long sounds good to you, Joe?” Instead, ask “What do you think about a two-week stay; that’s how long you stayed with Uncle Matt last summer. Does that seem like a good length to stay at camp?”

Of course you should respect your kid’s choice for a shorter camp stay if that is so desired, but if they’re okay with it—the longer the better! While a specialty camp could get boring, concentrating on the same activities routinely, but traditional camps that offer such long camp sessions are typically exceptional, advanced, and well-rounded programs with a variety of choices in activities and more than just one or two visiting days.

A major benefit to a longer stay a well-designed camp is that campers have the opportunity to grow and develop significant skill levels in the activities of their choosing. As Dr. Thurber and Dr. Malinowski put it in their book, “You simply cannot go through all the archery or riflery marksmanship rankings, or learn the finer points of English riding, or earn a SCUBA certification, or become and expert sailor, in one short week. Those sort of accomplishments require a longer session.”

Help your kid to consider a longer camp stay for a fully immersive experience to get the most out of camp. Be sure to tune in for more great tips and advice next Monday and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John