Welcome New Campers

Today we welcomed a new set of campers to Rockbrook as we opened the 2nd July mini session. Most of these campers are returning from last summer and a few are new to RBC, but regardless, you could feel the excited anticipation everywhere. The 4-week campers were also thrilled to see their old friends returning to camp and to meet the newest Rockbrook girls. It sometimes surprises people when they arrive at camp an see how friendly everyone is. We get the comment all the time, “Everyone is so nice here!” It’s true; Rockbrook is a down-to-earth, friendly place, quick to welcome new smiling faces. It takes about 5 minutes for a new camper to find a friend and head off to explore the camp. It may seem odd, but it’s a good feeling for parents, when their daughter tells them, “OK, bye mom,” effectively saying everything is fine and she’s ready to begin enjoying camp. Fostering a sense of independence is a big part of being at camp, and with friendly people all around to provide encouragement, this is a lot easier to accomplish.

RIght before lunch, the entire camp assembled on the hill. This is a chance to sing camp songs, learn about the camp activities through a series of skits, and today, enjoy the warm sunshine and mountain view. The Hi-Up girls lead most of the songs taking time to teach everyone several of the most important ones. The Line Heads also present their “Mop Awards” to the cabins that have done exceptionally good work keeping their cabin clean. This year, and different from last year, the three Line Heads decorated their mops (really brooms) as the three ships from the Christopher Columbus expedition: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Why? Well, just for fun of course!

Lunch really hit the spot. We had homemade macaroni and cheese casserole, fresh local steamed green beans, and bowls of blackberries. The salad bars and peanut butter and jelly station saw a little action, but that Mac and Cheese was popular. Good stuff.

For the afternoon, a group of counselors organized a fun Hawaiian Carnival down on the landsports field. They set up several activity stations all around the field: slip-n-slide, snow cones, pace painting, hula hoops, and coconut bowling. We also had a huge inflatable water slide and another inflatable obstacle course set up. With grass skirts and colorful leis for everyone, and music pumping it was an excellent summer afternoon party. To top it off, we just had to have a shaving cream fight too. When you’re already wet, and maybe a little messy from running around, it’s so good to “clean off” with shaving cream… crazy designs on your friend’s back, outrageous hair styles. It’s all great fun, and hilarious for the girls. A quick rinse under the hose, dip in the lake, and shower before dinner, and the girls were feeling good. Be sure to scroll through the photo gallery to see more.

A great first day in the “Heart of a Wooded Mountain.”

Between Sessions

This is the time at camp when we have our 4-week campers but not a mini session group, a “between session” time. The first July Mini session girls left on Thursday and the second mini session girls arrive tomorrow. That means we have about 80 fewer girls around, but wow are they enthusiastic camp kids. Since they are here the longest, they know camp really well, and have loads of time to deepen their friendships and dig deeper into different activities. It’s no surprise that we have our best climbers and paddlers with us right now. These 4-week campers also tend to be Middlers and Seniors who, as they’ve returned each summer, move up from a shorter sessions just to have more time at camp. These are the girls who more than “love” camp; they say they “couldn’t live without it!”

Dinner tonight included a fun southern traditional food— boiled peanuts! Rick was able to get 80 pounds (!) of green, unroasted peanuts, so he decided to boil them up. It’s amazing how nice and sweet they taste even with nothing added but a little salt. With the peanuts, we had BLT sandwiches, chips and fresh pineapple. Over on the sidebar, I saw some leftover fried green tomatoes from lunch earlier. Talk about southern food! Rick’s been keeping us very well fed.

Tonight’s evening program was an all-camp game of “Minute to Win It.” We divided everyone up into small teams that then competed in several different crazy relay races. We found out who could eat an oreo cookie the fastest when it’s first placed on your forehead (no hands!). We raced to sort a bag of skittles by color. We tried to juggle balloons. We stacked Swiss Rolls, and balanced gold balls. It’s all pretty funny to see the girls tackle these challenges, so even the spectators had a great time laughing as different groups struggled through the relays. It’s marvelous to have this much fun with such simple props. Camp is often just that, being with your friends and enjoying activities you wouldn’t ordinarily do at home. Really great stuff!

Play Outside this Summer!

One of the tag lines we often use to evoke Rockbrook is “Play outside this summer.” You can see it all over our website, on a lot of our printed materials, and even on a t-shirt or two. We really like how it’s a great summary of what camp involves— spending a lot of time outside and a lot of time playing.

It’s particularly neat to realize that by fostering both outdoor experience and group play, camp makes both of these better. Compared to being inside, it’s just more fun to play outside, and being outside encourages imagination and physical activity, two powerful stimulants to play. Outside you get to run around, be free of all those indoor limitations (having to avoid noise, messiness, walls), and become whoever the game requires. Outdoor play is also usually a group activity. It certainly is at camp. You and your friends make it happen. You build important relationships when playing together. These are real human connections that tend to run much deeper than those found in-doors or in school. Perhaps this begins to explain why girls say their camp friends are their absolute best friends; they are friends formed while playing outside. The things that make outdoor play better are the forces that make camp friends so strong.

What do you think?

Summer Camp Archery

So let’s say you get to summer camp and you’ve never tried archery. Sure you’ve seen it on TV and you know it means pulling back an arrow in a bow, releasing it while aiming at a target, and hopefully hitting the target in the center. But you’ve never really tried it before.

At first, it’s kind of funny. After learning the basics about the equipment and how to shoot, you give archery a try and shoot arrows over, under, to the side, and anywhere but on the target. Slowly but surely though, each round lets you make small adjustments. A little coaching gets thrown in, and you are soon scoring points on the target.

Next thing you know, you’re hooked, and you’re selecting archery again for one of your daily camp activities. Archery becomes one of your favorite things to do at summer camp.

That’s cool, but what do you do when you get home from camp? How can you keep shooting, and improve you archer’s skills? Well, there might be a local archery club near you. You could also form an archery club and join the Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) organization.  If you can find an adult supervisor, set up a safe archery range, and gather the proper equipment, you can begin to practice shooting archery all year long.  This might be tough to do by yourself, but if you can get several friends and their parents to get excited about the idea, you can do it!  Your club can then compete in local or regional tournaments, and you might even be able to join the youth world team and compete in other countries representing America.

Archery can be a lifelong sport, and just think, it all started at summer camp.

Tetherball Games for Kids

Tetherball! One of those great outdoor games at Rockbrook that seems to always be in motion. What is tetherball? My dictionary puts it this way:

a game in which two people use their hands or paddles to hit a ball suspended on a cord from an upright post, the winner being the first person to wind the cord completely around the post.

It takes practice, like most games, but it’s fun no matter how good you are. A quick game played between activity periods or during free time before meals— we love it!