Hey, Camp Fans!

Here at Everything Summer Camp, we just can’t help ourselves but to give credit where credit is due. That’s why we like to talk up the people whose products we offer; we also like to talk up camps that excel at showing kids a great camp experience. Shining the spotlight all across the country, the camp we talk about next could be the one you’re attending this summer!Just like Everything Summer Camp, Camp Timberlane is also located in Wisconsin. Proud to operate in the same state, Timberlane’s all-boys camp is roughly a two-and-a-half-hour drive from us, located alongside Lake Towanda in Woodruff.

A beautiful campground, Timberlane is equipped with awesome facilities and features of great variety, so there’s sure to be SOMEthing for EVERYone! They’ve got a climbing tower, an archery area, basketball and tennis courts, a batting cage as well as a baseball diamond, a volleyball court, and an impressive setup for water activities like waterskiing, fishing, sailing, boating, or just, plain swimming!

For fun, indoor activities, the Timberlane Recreation Hall is a kid magnet! Featuring a Ping-Pong table, a Fusball table, and Shuffleboard, the Rec. Hall is definitely a pretty exciting place. This gorgeous log structure is also where the camp’s Guitar Classes are taught as well as the Comedy Sportz Improv Classes and the Gymnastics Program.

The campers all retire to their designated cabins at night, but no matter whether you’re staying in the Cheyenne Cabin, the Sioux, Cherokee, or any of the other dozen cabins at Timberlane, you’re cabin sits along the peaceful lakeshore. What more could a kid ask for in this lovely, wooded setting?

Camp Timberlane operates away from their campground as well. In fact, a major part of Camp Timberlane’s program is their amazing wilderness trips. They send river canoeing, lake canoeing, backpacking, rock climbing, and sea kayaking trips that travel all over Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Canada. Their trips last for as long as 12 days in spectacular wilderness settings. Highly skilled and qualified trip leaders accompany each trip and teach the kids outdoor living and environmental stewardship.

Because all in all, Camp Timberlane is much more than just a place—it’s a community where kids have been gathering for over 50 years, to gain skills and inner growth through the subtleties of playing, making friends, and having FUN! Find out what Camp Timberlane can do for your child! Check it out for yourself!

- John

Hey, Camp Preppers!

So you’ve got your camp picked out, you’re shopping for camping gear, you’re scheduling a physical; you’re on top of it when it comes to prepping for your child’s summer camp stay this season. But there’s one part of camp prepping that you won’t find on any packing list or complete with a visit to the doctor.

A major part of preparing for camp is including your child in the preparations.

Posting on Mondays throughout the month of April, I will be sharing tips and advice on great ways to involve your child in the planning processes like shopping and packing. What this involvement will do for your kid is take away the mystery that surrounds summer camp

Just the same way that it’s a big deal for kids to play a part in choosing their classes for school, it’s also a big deal for kids to feel as though they have a certain amount of control in the decision-making processes of summer camp.

The fact is that kids who aren’t involved in the planning of their own camp experience end up feeling forced to go. They are much more likely to get homesick rather than kids who, with the help and guidance of their parents, make decisions about their camp stay.

A great way to urge kids to get more involved in the planning process is simply by asking them questions about what they would like to get out of their camp experience. Encourage your kid to ask friends who have already gone to camp questions about how they liked it and what the activities were like.

Tune in next week to learn about the importance helping your kid grasp JUST HOW LONG their stay at summer camp will be. You can get even better pointers from The Summer Camp Handbook, available at Everything Summer Camp. As always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Summer Campers!

Admirable involvement in the summer camp lifestyle is everywhere you look. Knowing what a great impact camp can have on a kid’s life, people can play a huge role in supporting, donating, or even launching a camp. For never actually having ATTENDED summer camp when he was younger, Kirk Cameron certainly realizes the impact that camp has on kids. That’s why he launched Camp Firefly.

Best known for his role as Mike Seaver from the classic sitcom, ‘Growing Pains’ (which started when he was a child and stretched to his early adolescence), Kirk was certainly a teenage heartthrob in the 80’s and early 90’s.

‘Growing Pains’ revolves around the Seaver family, living in New York. The premise of the show starts with psychiatrist, Jason Seaver who starts working from home since his wife, Maggie, resumed her old occupation as a reporter. Dr. Seaver is left during the workdays to fulfill his job’s needs AND look after their four children: Mike (Kirk Cameron), Carol, Ben, and Chrissy. And heartwarming hilarity ensues.

Kirk’s gone on to do lots of recurring television appearances in shows like ‘Herbie the Love Bug’, ‘Touched by an Angel’, and ‘Full House’ as well as work in film such as ‘Beyond Witch Mountain’ and ‘Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land’.

But beyond his work onscreen, Kirk has done awesome deeds of good will. In co-founding his summer camp, Camp Firefly, with his wife—actress, Chelsea Noble, these two have made a place where families with terminally and seriously ill children, can go to get a break from their exhaustive everyday that’s filled with medical treatments and financial concerns.

Camp Firefly is an all expenses-paid, one-week retreat not just for the sick child, but for the entire family so that, it becomes an experience that offers a burdened family to spend some quality time with each other and meet other families who share similar adversity.

Click here to check out more about Camp Firefly and scroll down to spot Kirk in this great opening sequence from ‘Growing Pains’.

- John

Hey there, all you Pranksters!

As opposed to last year’s pranking post in which I relayed the “history” of April Fools’ Day (and then proceeded to flat-out LIE about every bit of it), today I would like to give you an actually ACCURATE account concerning the beginnings of this peculiar holiday. All joking aside, this is the honest origin of April Fools’ Day—for serious….

To be perfectly honest, nobody REALLY knows exactly how this day began, however, we have a couple good ideas.

IDEA #1: Some people feel that there is substantial, historical record of April Fools’ Day in Chaucer’s story, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’ within the classic ‘Canterbury Tales’. It’s postulated by some scholars and historians that this story about a fool who is tricked is noted by the narrator to have taken place on April 1.

If this ‘Canterbury Tales’ reference were confirmed, it would be the first-discovered record of an April Fools’ Day, dating back to 1392! However, enthusiastically debated, this theory has mostly been debunked, though some maintain that ‘The Canterbury Tales’ contains the earliest record of April Fools’.

IDEA #2: More likely, April Fools’ Day was born in the 16 Century when Pope Gregory XIII implemented the Gregorian calendar which brought about a radical change that moved the first day of the year (which had always been April 1) to the first of JANUARY!

Without the lightning-fast media of our current day, news took a very long time to reach everybody. Those who were unaware continued to celebrate the new year on April 1 and were promptly ridiculed as ‘April Fools’ by others who were hip to the new calendar.

Spawning a celebratory craze the world over, April Fools’ Day has evolved into a lighthearted day of (hopefully harmless) and creative tricks. Check out the informative video below and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

Here at Everything Summer Camp we pride ourselves in the quality products that we offer. Of course, we take full credit when it comes to the C&N Footlocker trunks that we manufacture ourselves ever since our humble beginnings, but we give absolute credit to those whose quality products we offer on our online shop.

Last week, I posted about the nine pairs of Smartwool socks we’re now offering. Smartwool makes their socks of Merino Wool (the preferred sheep’s wool to use) because their socks are the best. You can now find Smartwool socks for Women and Kids at Everything Summer Camp as well as socks that are meant for the varied adventures that you’re sure to have throughout your summer camp stay.

Smartwool’s manufacturing process is an interesting one as it doesn’t start in a warehouse or laboratory. It begins somewhere in the mountains of New Zealand when, one day, the herds of sheep there get a haircut. Smartwool shears 300,000 sheep per year. Coming off the sheep greasy, the wool is cleaned, combed, and spun into yarn which is then made into amazing Smartwool products like SOCKS!

These guys use Merino sheep wool—the preferred sheep wool because of its unmatched comfort and softness. Merino sheep whose wool goes to Smartwool, live happy, peaceful lives in their natural habitat. Smartwool knows that happy sheep will make for unparalleled wool and thus and unparalleled product. Happy sheep = happy customers.

The people at Smartwool are smart. Not only about the way they make their products, but also the relationships they form with their business partners. They only work with a select group of businesses that they trust. It’s an honor for Everything Summer Camp to offer their amazing socks on our summer camp store. Check out their fun website and learn another thing or two about Smartwool.

You can learn more about Smartwool right here and, as always, thanks for reading.

- John