Oh It's Good To Be Back!

So I've finally made it halfway across the world and I'm back at Camp Sloane YMCA for the summer. I've been here just under a week now and I am loving being back in my home away from home. There's only about 10 of us at camp at the moment (and for the next week until supervisor and lifeguard training starts), so it's a lot of fun having camp all to ourselves! I always love being one of the first to arrive, getting the lay of the land and settling in before the mayhem of staff the summer really begins.

This past week has been pretty busy, full of random jobs around camp, preparing for the kids to come. During the Spring season we also have groups come to camp with whom we do all sorts of activities, ranging from canoeing to hiking to fishing to creative arts. For the three days after I arrived we had a primary school group of the loveliest kids you'll possibly ever meet and we had so much fun showing them around camp, doing initiatives and games with them, and challenging them to work out all our camp riddles or, as we like to call them, 'never tell' games.

I've been doing some bits and bobs to start preparing for this summer's Media program, which I'm in charge of. There's been a lot of ideas floating about for new videos and classes and it's all exciting stuff, if not a little stressful at the moment, just because I haven't quite had time to wrap my head around everything I need to do yet... give me another week and I'll be entirely sorted though!

That's about it for this week. Next week a lot of my friends whom I haven't seen for about 8 months are going to be arriving AND it's my birthday (birthdays at camp are the BEST), so it's going to be a pretty awesome time!

For those of you that aren't at camp yet and are so excited you can barely sleep (I know I was), don't worry, it'll come around soon enough!

The greatest kids ever!

Planning Your Activities

So it's getting pretty close to camp starting now and I'm sure a lot of you have already started packing and planning for your summer ahead (some of your may actually be at camp already...jealous!) I've only got 3 more sleeps until I'm back at camp and I don't think I could possibly be more excited!

So what have you got planned so far? You know what you're taking with you, and you've thought about where you want to travel after camp ends, but what about while you're actually AT camp? Have you thought about what you're going to be doing each day, or what you're going to be teaching (if you're running an activity that is).

You don't need to have EVERTHING entirely mapped out, because you'll be doing a lot of planning with your supervisors during staff training, but it's a good idea to have some sort of plan of how you're going to structure your lessons, what sort of things you want the kids to be learning, or even just a few ideas for how to deal with a homesick camper or how to entertain your kids during some daily down time.

I'm sure most of you already have some experience in teaching your specialty but for those of you that don't, it's really not as daunting as it may first seem. The biggest thing I would suggest is that you think about how YOU were taught the skills you'll be passing on to the kids. Did your teacher have a good way of explaining things, was there a particular thing about the activity that stood out for you, something you could use to engage the kids at camp? Once you've got your hook, it's really just about planning your lessons around that - use it as a starting point and work from there. I'm not saying have every lesson for the entire summer planned out (although your supervisor will probably love you forever if you do!), but just jot some notes down so that when you get into staff training and someone asks you to fill in a lesson plan, your brain is already in gear!

I know some of you might be going to camp without knowing what you'll be teaching yet...sometimes it will get changed around or decided mid way through training, but have a think about what you like to do, and what you are passionate about. Think about how you could pass on your passions to the kids. As a general counselor it's also really important that you get thinking about the things you're going to do to bond with your kids - do you have a book you could read them in the evenings, some nail polish for makeovers, or just some random games up your sleeve? As a counselor it is your job to make absolutely everything fun, whether that be teaching your activity, eating in the dining hall or merely getting the kids to brush their teeth before bed.

So get your thinking caps on and get ready for the summer of a lifetime!