kids

Summer water climbing Kids Games
• Games • rbc

Summer Games for Kids

Summer Kids Games

What is that thing?! Well, the kids at camp have named it “The Toy,” but it’s basically an aqua ropes-course, a climbing structure made of wood and rope suspended over the water on one side of the Rockbrook lake. The most popular game kids play on it is really challenging— you try to reach the farthest of 5 rings (like the girl in the photo) as you go out hand-to-hand over the water.

This is just one of the options at camp and is something you don’t have to do if you don’t want to. If swimming is more your thing, that’s fine.  Even if you don’t want to get in the water, that’s fine too.

Of course, if you don’t make it to the 5th ring, there’s a fun splash at the bottom! But if you do make it to the last ring, and only a few kids have, we announce your name in the dining hall and reward you with a special treat/prize.

Do you know what the prize is? Let us know in the comments!

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Girls Learning Leadership
• Summer Camp • rbc

Leadership Summer Camp

Kids Learning Leadership

Summer camp is one of the best places for children to learn about leadership, to explore what it means to be a good leader, and to practice the kinds of personal skills important to being a leader. Bring together kids of different ages (at Rockbrook that’s girls between 6 and 16 years old) and provide so many activities where they interact and play together, and you’ll have one event after another where leadership is central. Campers find themselves asking questions like, “How can we work together on this?” and saying things like “Let’s make a plan.” It might be for a cabin skit or preparing for a group hike, but being a good listener, cooperating, maybe compromising, being creative about individual contributions, and being confident about being part of a team are almost daily parts of camp. Particularly for our oldest campers, for example the CAs who plan the end-of-session banquet, overnight camp offers (even requires, at times) chances to develop leadership skills and serve as leaders for the younger campers.

Sure there’s lots of crazy fun going on, but we’re growing as well.

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Kids at camp in North Carolina
• Children • rbc

Kids Camp in NC

Kids at camp in North Carolina

Rockbrook is a kids camp in NC, that’s for sure, but we have so many kids that come to camp from other states far and wide. Of course, most are in the south— South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Florida —but campers come from the midwest (e.g. Ohio!) and the northeast (Washington, DC and Brooklyn, NY for example) as well. Most campers drive to camp with their parents, so being within a day’s drive is the norm. Still, plenty of kids end up flying to camp when they live too far away to drive (like in California!). North Carolina is just a great NC location for a kids camp, even if (and especially if!) you don’t live here.

Take a look at our location page, and learn even more about this area of North Carolina.

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Sleep Away Girls Camp
• Summer Camp • rbc

Sleep Away Camp Girls

Sleep Away Girls Camp

When you ask people who attended a sleep away camp when they were a kid, you’ll find that they recall the experience, not only fondly, but also as one of the most important things they did as a child. And this is true for just about everybody you ask, not just the occasional “camp fan.”

A famous example here is Michael Eisner and his book about camp. There’s a lot to it, and we’ve discussed the benefits of attending camp before, but this photo speaks to the empowerment and self confidence girls often develop at summer camp. Being away from home and parents, being challenged and succeeding in different activities, and being friends with so many different types of people— all weave together to give camp its secret power.

Take that power gained as a child and watch it do great things in adults!

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canoeing girls camp
• Adventure • rbc

Canoeing Summer Camps 4 Kids

Canoeing Girls at Summer Camp

Speaking of canoeing, it’s still a summer camp activity we offer at Rockbrook. Like most of the outdoor adventure activities, we have a progression where kids first learn basic skills and safety procedures, and then move up to more challenging aspects. For canoeing, we learn the names and uses of the equipment (the boats, PFDs and paddles, for example), then practice different paddling strokes and techniques to steer the canoes in the water. With all of that firmly in place, we’re off to one of the local rivers— the French Broad, the Green, the Tuckaseegee, or the Nantahala. Each offers its own unique challenges and whitewater thrills.

Even if you’ve never tried canoeing before, camp is a great place to begin learning. It’s not difficult to do, and everyone, no matter what age, can become comfortable in a canoe.

Don’t be surprised if you end up really liking it!

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Kids Craft Camp Activities
• Arts • rbc

Kids Craft Camp

Kids Craft Camp Activities

We found this great photo from last summer and it reminded us of how much fun it is to tie-dye t-shirts at camp. It’s always exciting to see what your shirt looks like when it’s done, and so difficult to wait overnight while the dye sets! And like all the craft activities at camp, getting to bring home all of your creations makes it even better.

How many tie-dye shirts do you have? Let’s see…. one every summer at camp, at least!

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tetherball game
• Summer Camp • rbc

A Place to Grow

A place for girls to grow

In her book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Wendy Mogel critiques what she sees as a troubling trend in parenting these days— an excessive tendency to shield children from any kind of discomfort.

“Parents are so busy protecting their children that they don’t give them a chance to learn how to maneuver on their own outside home or school.”

Spending time at summer camp serves as a welcome counter force to this trend. As they choose their own activities, sleep in rustic cabins, live with and make new friends, young people at camp are given a great opportunity to grow. Far beyond what parents might orchestrate at home, camp encourages kids to become more independent, to try new things, and to learn from the experience.

It’s a lot of things (like a really fun time!), but perhaps most fundamentally, camp is a setting for exploring who we really are.  Stepping out of our normal routines, we can try new things, endure discomforts and setbacks (try again), and marvel at unexpected accomplishments.

Seen this video? It’s more about how camp is a place for girls to grow.

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