WEEK 5 & 6!!!

Hey Everybody!


Sorry about the lack of posting and details in this post, the holidays are a busy time. But I wanted to at least post what the themes would be.... So.....


Week 5 is HARRY POTTER week!!!! As promised, Speedy, we will play Quidditch!!! I know many of us have characters we want to be... so go ahead and start planning and claiming your character!


Week 6 will be COLOR WAR!! What do you think of 3 teams?


For both of these ALREADY AMAZING WEEKS, what can we do to make them even better????


Happy Camping,
Squirrel

WEEK 4 - PIRATE WEEK!

Week Four – PIRATE WEEK!!!!

ARR, MATEY!!! Once again, Women’s Week has helped us prepare for a theme week… PIRATE week! We have decorations and costumes galore including pirate hats, eye patches, and pirate ships!

At least one of our all camp games will include some sort of treasure hunting all over camp!

I’m working on making up an all camp game where 4 teams will all battle each other in sword fighting, treasure hunting, sailing, and more! But right now, it’s just a complicated mess of notes.

And then for Friday’s all camp, I was thinking a big game of capture the flag or wells fargo!

Shipwreck is definitely a great meal to have during Pirate week, and we’ll probably have a dress up meal where everybody has an eye patch and has to eat one-eyed, or has a hook on their hand and must eat one-handed.

Some Upick/CYOA ideas are sailing, orienteering/geocaching, a scavenger hunt, etc. In the Tamarack, we could also have kids make their own little sailboats and have a race or make their own treasure chest and fill it with treasures from around camp!

For staff who are eagerly dreaming of camp, what I’m looking for from you now is feedback. I am really interested in what you think so far of this blog and our themes for this summer. If you don’t want to post here, please feel free to send me a facebook message, email, or even text me. Even if it’s just a quick comment that you are looking forward to a specific week, I’m looking for anything right now just to know staff are reading my blog. J

Specifically for pirate week, I am looking for some enthusiastic pirates that are excited about treasure hunting, sword fighting, sailing, shooting cannons of water balloons, building a pirates’ lair, and whatever else we all come up with for this super cool week of camp!

Happy Camping,

Squirrel

WEEK 3 - JUNGLE WEEK

Week 3 – JUNGLE WEEK!!!

Many of you know that last summer’s Women’s Week had “It’s a Jungle” theme. This means we have lots of fun stuff from them to use this summer for our new Jungle Week! We have animal face masks and tails galore! We have lots of stuffed animals and posters to decorate with!

This new Jungle theme has lots of potential, so get excited and let’s make camp into the wildest jungle ever! 

This is also a really easy theme to get campers involved and excited, because most the kids I’ve met would love to make an animal mask at the Tamarack and act like an animal all week!

All Camp ideas consist of the ever-popular counselor hunt, where counselors (or I was thinking this could be fun for Algonquin?) dress up as animals and hide all over camp. Campers then go around in groups and find as many “animals” as they can.

Another idea is Animal Olympics with different events like Cheetah sprint (running), Shark race (swimming), Kangaroo hop (hopping), Crab walk soccer (kicking), etc.

And third, we could have a stripes vs. spots capture the flag type game. This could work really well on Friday, because we stay in main field and can play until the bus shows up.

***I have a question not related to any particular theme, but all camps in general: What type of All Camp is your favorite??? Run around-play a game in main field? Groups walking/running all over camp? Stations that groups rotate between? Rainy day-indoors all camps? WHAT DO YOU ENJOY??? and WHAT DO YOU THINK CAMPERS MOST ENJOY???***

Back to Jungle week ideas,

For a meal, it would be cool to take the “shipwreck” idea, but make it that monkeys have gotten into the lodge and messed everything up. Staff could dress and act like monkeys for the entire meal.

When I was little at camp, we had a “jungle” breakfast (which would be an idea for pack out). Counselors got up early and hid our breakfast all around the unit so we had to go find it. We each had to find each part, so 1 bag of cereal, 1 fruit, 1 bowl, 1 spoon, 1 milk (if we had cartons) or the big gallon was hidden.

So what can you start thinking about? UPICK & CYOA ideas! And if you get really ambitious, make or find an animal costume… I want to be a lion!

Happy Camping,

Squirrel

WEEK 2 - DISNEY WEEK!!

Week 2 is Disney week! (and Pixar, because I like CARS and TOY STORY!!)

If you’re looking for ways to procrastinate doing your homework, watch some Disney movies and say you are preparing for camp! :0) One of my ideas for an all camp is some version of Disney Trivia! (Does anybody have Disney Scene It or Trivial Pursuit Disney or something we could use?)

For the big all camp game, I made up a Disney Mystery/Scavenger Hunt type game. I will need staff dressed up as “good” Disney characters (and an “item” the villains have stolen) and some evil Disney villains to lurk around camp, so start thinking about who you might want to dress up as! Some examples are Winnie the Pooh and a jar of honey OR Marlin and Nemo OR Aladdin and a magic carpet. Some villains include Maleficent, Hades, Gaston, Scar, etc. (The villains do not have to match with the good characters)

For decorations, we have all the colored pictures from last year and the big banners to hang up. (Should I look into getting the tablecloths again?)

Disney music will obviously be played all week J And we could have a sing-off (maybe included in the trivia tournament) And a stop-and-go meal. (Is there a name for that meal… where we play music and you have to freeze when the music stops?)

An idea for a CYOA is “Princess School” (Yes, I totally got this idea from my IT 2’s last summer that rated my princess level as a “PEEP” which comes before a PIT (Princess-in-training)) … anyway, Princess School could include the nail painting, learning table etiquette at a tea party, wearing a dress and crown etc. (I’ll let the J’s for ’11 come up with more ideas for that since they’ve already started my princess training) And if we are going to have a Princess CYOA, then we could also have a Hero CYOA where they run around on an obstacle course and “train” to be a Disney hero! And/Or we could have training to become a villain and make mischief around camp and capture the princesses. And the heroes would have to come save them! … Okay, this sounds more like an all camp than CYOA, but I just type what I think of in my head.

Time for your ideas to start being posted!

And staff & JC’s – start thinking of who you would like to be in the All Camp game

Happy Camping,

Squirrel

EVERY WEEK - TIE-DYE TUESDAY!

We all know how much I love wearing tie-dye, so of course, we are going to have TIE-DYE TUESDAY! :)

Now, to make Tie-Dye Tuesday happen, we need to have the campers tie-dye as soon as possible.... meaning Monday morning everybody in camp will have to find time to Tie-Dye - Yay!

My idea is Tie-dye and team building Mondays 10-12. I added in the team building because it is so important at camp for campers to learn to work together, trust others, and how to communicate, and most of our programs do some team building already. This will be a great "first activity" at camp for you to get to know your campers better and for them to come together as a group (which will hopefully carry on throughout the week). What do you all think? (Especially counselors, because you will be the ones facilitating the team building activities) As for ideas and resources, you will have LOTS (I can post a bunch online on the camp website or on my blog ahead of time and then we'll actually do some of them during staff training)

Happy Camping,

Squirrel

WEEK 1 - TRAVEL WEEK

Week 1 (Me & My Gal) - Travel/International Week!!!

Before I go into detail... I want to make it clear, NOTHING about the themes are set yet (except for the theme itself) ... This is a blog for brainstorming ideas for each theme. I will post what I've thought of, and then it's your job to say what you like, dislike, have questions about, and ideas that you have to add. This blog is open to everybody (staff, parents, campers, etc.) so please be aware of that when posting. Staff and Algonquin are welcome to post opinions and ideas about each theme - the more the better!

My ideas for travel week...

-Upon arrival, each camper and gal will make themselves a passport to carry around throughout the week.

-There will be a section that lists places in camp, and in each of those places a stamp, so they can stamp that they went to that place.

-Another section will be trivia questions (about countries, about staff who have visited/lived in other countries, etc.)

-Also, a place where they can keep track of the different activities they do at camp

Upicks - start thinking... because we need lots... about countries you know stuff about! ... Could be making a food from another country, teaching a song or dance, learning a language, etc. An example of this... I have a digeridoo they can try playing and boomerangs to try throwing, and/or if somebody wanted to teach cricket or afl or another sport. There are lots of possibilities here.

Decorations - flags around the lodge

All Camp Idea - Amazing Race around camp incorporating different countries, can get a puzzle piece at each station/place to collect and put in passport.

Okay, so that's the start of my ideas, I will probably post more as you all post your thoughts.

Lastly, at the end of each theme blog, I will post what I am most looking for out of all of you (AKA what I need help for sure with)... For travel week, I need all of you to share your knowledge and resources about countries you know about, most of you will be helping run Upicks, so start thinking of what you would like to do.

I can't wait to hear your ideas! :)

Happy Camping,

Squirrel

CBH Theme Weeks!

Hey Everybody,

Themes have been decided on and will be printed in the brochure this year that will be coming out in late January. But that’s a long time to wait, so I will be posting one theme a week on this blog for the next 9 weeks! I will say some of my ideas about each theme, but I also want to hear your ideas too! So please comment and contribute to this blog and get excited, cause summer 2011 is gonna be awesome!

Squirrel

Camp Black Hawk

Camp Black Hawk is an amazing camp!

Check out these sweet pictures of staff from summer of 2010.

http://s1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb326/squirrel730/Camp%20Black%20Hawk/