Gratitude often naturally happens and develops at camp. For many children camp provides a place to move from ME to WE. This is a normal part of child development. Yet, it is camp that nurtures and pushes children further along this path. Some of this is because we live with others from different places and cultures. Sometimes friction is the result and this friction requires us to refocus on the good stuff. It can be the staff that grab a cabin and take them to the lake front to watch a setting sun and the brilliant colors. Or it maybe our daily Gratitude Journal, where we ask campers to write the good of the day, helping them focus on the good times and thier personal success.

Back at home families can continue to help their children be grateful. Here are a few helpful hints:

1- Stay Positive. Ones attitude directs what we will see. Help your child see the good, the positive. At camp we often ask a camper to say 3 good things about a person or situation that might be causing strife at the time. Keep your mindset positive by focusing on things you enjoy, not how tough things are going to be.

2- Journal. At SNC campers do a gratitude journal. Not only does it highlight the good of the day, but on those days when things are a little off, go back and take a read to chear yourself up.

3- Find Joy in a Ritual.  Daily have a ritual you know brings joy. A song in the morning, a cup of tea, bath, a walk with the dog, a phone  call to a friend. Have your child find their one thing that brings joy and schedule it into their day.

4- Servitude.It doesn’t have to be huge, and at SNC daily we set a tone for helping others, from holding the door or grabbing a broom to help. Yet, our favorite is "HOW CAN I HELP?",

5- Smile & Greet Everyone. Your inner grouch leaves when you smile and feel noticed. Swift Nature Camp believes in a community built on Kindness. So it only makes sence that you smile and say HI to everyone while walking on the path.

6- Show appreciation. Rolemodel to your kids appreciation for everything. This will help them see the good things in life plus it tells them what you want to see from them. Not to mention you will be happier because your mission is to raise up those doing good things...even if you expect them.

At camp one of the greatest natural benefits from your child being away from you for 3 or 6 weeks is the Gratitude towards you the family as they are reunited at the end of camp.

Speaking of gratitude, for us, Lonnie and Jeff, here at SNC we are grateful for you and your family. We appreciate your trust and support of camp that we so strongly believe in. It is a wonderful feeling to see your child every summer, to watch them grow, and to be a part of your family.

So what are you thankful for right now ? The above tools are intentional things we do to make our overnight summer camp so special. They are things you can bring home,  put your mind to it. Have a wonderful Holiday Season. Make it your best ever!

For years we have seen obesity increase in America. This is especially true with kids. Society has had many scape goats for this. But the truth is, that what we eat and our activity are the two easiest ways to affect obesity in our kids. Schools, feeling partially responsible have taken this issue on and have seen progress at reducing obesity. The latest information shows that schools are reasonably effective, and that most children gain weight during the summer months.  Yes, thats right, kids put on weight during the summer. When I was a kid, summers were a time of running, swimming, loads of physical activity, sadly, that is not the case any more.

Paul T von Hippel, PhD, associate professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, in Austin says "look beyond the school year, we need to  think about trying to change children's behavior when they are not in school," he urged. "We need to educate parents about nutrition, reduce child screen time, and regulate food marketing and advertising aimed at children".

Armed with this information, it is important that we analyze what our children are doing during the non school time, and how we can have a positive impact on reducing obesity. For many of us, working parents, it is difficult to make the time to keep our children off the screen and outside moving around. Paul Hippel said "My own experience with childhood obesity ended when I went to camp at age 8. Sending more children to summer camps or learning programs, for example, could potentially help lower rates of childhood obesity,"

As camp directors, we see this every summer, kids loose weight. How? It's simple. First, our cook, Michelle, makes meals that are home cooked, starting with raw ingredients and creating child friendly foods they will like. Next, at the table Counselors serve children, so they ensure that campers get a healthy mix of veggies along with their chicken for instance. A never ending salad bar is always available. As we all know, snacks are often the culprit. We only have apples as snacks and the campers love them. 2nd and probably most important is we have no screens at camp. Children's brains want to be engaged, so without a screen they have to get up and run, swim, play & socialize. Camp days are long - from 7:30 a.m.- 9 p.m. kids are busy all day longand this takes energy. Campers are not alone in this, everyone at camp looses weight during camp. For some it's a few pounds, for myself it's a healthy 10 lbs or so. So camp is part of my healthy lifestyle, maybe it could be part of your child's too.

Read more about summer obesity 

Lice are those pesky little creature that thrive in places where people are in close contact. This could be schools, churches and summer camps. Recently, these pesky little creatures seem to be more determined than ever to ruin a childs fun. Although it's kinda gross to think about lice living on your head, they are not dangerous and fairly easy to get rid. In communal settings like camp, where people live close to each other, it's important that Lice checks are in place. At Swift Nature Camp our nurse inspects each camper on the first day of camp. This is usally successful at stoping an outbreak because when we do find lice we start a treatment program of killing the lice with shampoo and then combing out any Eggs or Nits that might be left. Then a bout a week later we reshampoo and comb. At camp we do this in privacy with out letting the other campers know that lice have been detected. We know of many other camps that have had huge infestations where nearly all camp was effected. Our policy has kept lice outbreaks to a handfull of campers each year. Below is a recent report outlining the limited summer camps lice policy.

SAN FRANCISCO — Despite AAP recommendations for head lice management, 30% of summer camps were either unaware of guidelines or had no formal lice policy, according to survey results presented at the 2016 AAP National Conference and Exhibition.“Head lice often becomes a problem when people are concentrated together in one place, so naturally we think about children in the classroom, yet even more so at summer camps; whenever people are head-to-head, that is when there is the greatest risk of exposure,” Ashley DeHudy, MD, MPH, from the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital told Infectious Diseases in Children. “Considering the AAP’s current lice management recommendations for the school setting, I was interested in examining lice infestations in the camp setting to determine how the recommendations were being translated.”

To evaluate current summer camp policies regarding head lice management, DeHudy and colleagues partnered with a national Web-based health records system to send summer camp leadership (n=500) an online survey on lice policy, management and training. The researchers received a total of 255 responses, predominantly from camp directors (36%) and camp nurses (36%). 

Survey results demonstrated that while 30% of summer camps lacked formal head lice policies, another 34% of camps instead adhered to a “No-Nit” policy – excluding campers with the presence of nits only – despite AAP statements that these policies are ineffective. 

“We know that the AAP does not support ‘No-Nit’ policies in the school setting, because the presence of nits does not equal active infestation,” DeHudy said in an interview. “Similarly, summer camps should not exclude children based simply on the presence of nits.”

Among surveyed camp leadership, only 20% noted that a camper would be allowed to remain at camp and receive treatment if nits and live lice were found; 58% of survey responses reported that their camps would provide lice treatment, however only 40% of those said that their facility would repeat a second application, if needed, 7 days afterward. Furthermore, most surveyed summer camp personnel (63%) responded that manual removal of nits following treatment was required to prevent head lice infestation.

“In some instances, camp policies for managing head lice varied greatly from either American Camp Association recommendations or from the AAP’s recommendations for the school setting,” DeHudy said. “Also, when camp leadership was surveyed about their ability to detect lice infestations, only 50% felt confident their staff would be able to detect the lice, while 30% believed their staff would be confident in actually treating the lice infestation.”

According to the survey, 35% of camp leadership noted that they had little formal head lice education, yet most those responders said that they would favor hands-on or Web-based training in recognizing or treating lice. 

“It is important for pediatricians to reinforce to parents that they should familiarize themselves with whether their child’s summer camp has a head lice policy, and if so, what it is, because otherwise children might be coming home from camp a little earlier than expected,” DeHudy said.– by Bob Stott

Reference:
DeHudy A, et al. Abstract # 318305. Presented at: AAP National Conference and Exhibition; Oct. 22-25, 2016; San Francisco, California.

As a parent and a camp director, I often speak with parents that have their child on the fast track. Life has become all about building their child's resume, one filled with Accomplishment and Direction. When I mention I run a summer camp they are often unwilling to hear why camp is an important part of what today's children need. At Swift Nature Camp we are about people building not about building resumes. The  better the kids,  the better the people. We believe it is people that will change the world not resumes.
Recently the below article was in the Washington Post,  maybe this is what I need to print and hand out to those parents... Tell us what you think.

 

“Do you even like your children?” the woman I had just met asked me.

The audacity of the question took my breath away. I had been chatting with her, explaining that my kids go to sleep-away camp for two months every year.

I quickly realized two things at once: She was obnoxious, and she actually didn’t care if I missed my kids during the summer. She was talking about something else.I didn’t have to tell her the reason I “send them away” for most of the summer is because I like them. They adore camp, and it’s actually harder on me than it is on them. I often tell people that the first year they were both gone, it felt like I had lost an arm. I wandered around the house from room to room experiencing phantom limb pain.

Now, instead of being offended, I got excited.

I was going to be able to tell her something that my husband and I rarely get to explain: We do it because we truly think it will help our kids be successful in life. With under-employment and a stagnating labor market looming in their future, an all-around, sleep-away summer camp is one of the best competitive advantages we can give our children.

Huh?

Surely, college admissions officers aren’t going to be impressed with killer friendship bracelets or knowing all the words to the never-ending camp song “Charlie on the M.T.A.” Who cares if they can pitch a tent or build a fire?

Indeed, every summer my kids “miss out” on the specialized, résumé-building summers that their peers have. Their friends go to one-sport summer camps and take summer school to skip ahead in math. Older peers go to SAT/ACT prep classes. One kid worked in his dad’s business as an intern, while another enrolled in a summer program that helped him write all his college essays.

Many (this woman included) would say that I’m doing my children a serious disservice by choosing a quaint and out-of-date ideal instead. There are online “Ivy League Coaches” that might say we are making a terrible mistake.

We don’t think this is a mistake at all. It might not be something to put on the college application (unless my child eventually becomes a counselor), but that isn’t the goal for us.

Our goal is bigger.

We are consciously opting out of the things-to-put-on-the-college-application arms race, and instead betting on three huge benefits of summer camp, which we believe will give them a true competitive advantage — in life:

1. Building creativity.

2. Developing broadly as a human being.

3. Not-living-in-my-basement-as-an-adult independence.

MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson says, in his book “The Second Machine Age,” that we have reached a pivotal moment where technology is replacing skills and people at an accelerated pace. He argues that creativity and innovation are becoming competitive advantages in the race against artificial intelligence, because creativity is something a machine has a hard time replicating.

The problem is that creativity seems so intangible.

Steve Jobs once said, “Creativity is just connecting things.” He believed that people invent when they connect the dots between the experiences they’ve had. To do this, he argued that we need to have more experiences and spend more time thinking about those experiences.

Indeed. According to Adam Grant’s book “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World,” researchers at Michigan State University found that to receive the Nobel Prize, you need deep study in your field and those broad experiences Jobs was talking about. They studied the winning scientists from 1901 through 2005 and compared them with typical scientists living at the same time. Grant writes that the Nobel Prize winners were:

* Two times more likely to  play an instrument, compose or conduct.

* Seven times more likely to draw, paint or sculpt.

* Seven-and-a-half times more likely to do woodwork or be a mechanic, electrician or glassblower.

* Twelve times more likely to write poetry, plays, novels or short stories.

* And 22 times more likely to be an amateur actor, dancer or magician.

You read that right. Magician.

It’s not just that this kind of original thinker actively seeks out creative pursuits. These original experiences provide a new way of looking at the world, which helped the prize-winners think differently in their day jobs.

The beauty of summer camp is that not only do kids get to do all sorts of crazy new things, they also get to do it in nature, which lends its own creative boost.

Most importantly, my kids have such intensely packed schedules full of sports, music, art classes, community service and technological stimulation throughout the school year that it makes finding these all-important quiet mental spaces more difficult.

Summers provide a much-needed opportunity for my children to unplug, achieve focus and develop those creative thought processes and connections.

Okay, okay. Creativity might be a compelling tool to beat out that neighbor girl applying to the same college, but what about this “developing broadly as a human being” stuff?

I didn’t come up with that phrase. Harvard did.

William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard, has penned a compelling letter to parents. It practically begs and pleads with them to reevaluate the summer extracurriculars race and to “bring summer back,” with an “old-fashioned summer job” perhaps, or simply time to “gather strength for the school year ahead.”

Fitzsimmons writes, “What can be negative is when people lose sight of the fact that it’s important to develop broadly as a human being, as opposed to being an achievement machine. In the end, people will do much better reflecting, perhaps through some down time, in the summer.”

In terms of “developing broadly as a human being,” summer camp can provide an impressive list of life skills.

Studies over the past decade have shown outdoor programs stimulate the development of interpersonal competencies, enhance leadership skills and have positive effects on adolescents’ sense of empowerment, self-control, independence, self-understanding, assertiveness, decision-making skills, self-esteem, leadership, academics, personality and interpersonal relations.

Now for the cherry on top: Independence.

Michael Thompson, the author of “Homesick and Happy,” has written, “… there are things that, as a parent, you cannot do for your children, as much as you might wish to. You cannot make them happy (if you try too hard they become whiners); you cannot give them self-esteem and confidence (those come from their own accomplishments); you cannot pick friends for them and micro-manage their social lives, and finally you cannot give them independence. The only way children can grow into independence is to have their parents open the door and let them walk out. That’s what makes camp such a life-changing experience for children.”

So, yes, Ms. Tiger Mom, I am letting my children walk out the door and make useless lanyards for two months.

They might not have anything “constructive” to place on their college application, but they will reflect, unwind, think and laugh. They will explore, perform skits they wrote themselves and make those endless friendship bracelets to tie onto the wrists of lifelong friends.

The result will be that when they come back through our door, we’re pretty sure that, in addition to having gobs of creativity and independence, they’ll be more comfortable with who they are as people.

And just maybe they’ll even bring back a few magic tricks.

Laura Clydesdale lives in Berkeley, Calif., with her husband and children.

We want the best for our children. Yet, for myself, as a parent of a 14 year old son,  I often look back and think of a simpler, less connected time. A time when the Andy Griffith show roll modeled how life should be. I want my son to know what these times were like and connect with them. But, as I nostagically look back to these simpler days am I limiting the skills he will need for the 21st Century? To make this even more complicated our son is Homeschooled. So where can I turn to give my child an advantage in years and decades to come?
 Most parents tend to rely on our own pareting skills and schools to raise our children. Summer Camp is as often missed oppertunity. Children tend to learn when they are away from us and away from school. This is when they are actually most able and willing to learn. This is where the summer camp experience comes into play and the American Camp Association realizes the impact it has on todays youth is more than playing outside.

The American Camp Association is jumping with both feet into measuring camp’s impact on kids.

In the process, the national organization representing 2800 summer and after-school camps has found a new marketing tool: 21st century skills.

“There’s a common perception that the American Camp Association is about canoes in a lake and tents,” said Tom Holland, chief executive of the camp association.

“But where we have transitioned in the last ten years is being about youth development, specifically the out-of-school-time space.” He spoke at the group’s annual conference in February in Atlanta, where various workshop leaders spoke excitedly about the new direction of camp.

Summer camps still have traditional activities such as archery and swimming, Holland said. They may be located in beautiful wilderness areas,”

“It’s not about that location. It’s about the growth and development of a child,” he said, “the outcomes that they have through our programs.”

For years, camp has fostered leadership, grit, tenacity and resilience in kids in the course of fun activities, he said, referring to qualities that researchers are pointing to as valuable.

“That’s the core of who we’ve always been,” he said.

But camps need to demonstrate their impact.

“Let’s track those outcomes,” he said.

About 20 percent of camp association member track outcomes. “It’s a number we hope to grow,” Holland said.

The association is urging its members, which include nonprofit and for-profit camp operators, to begin using the new Youth Outcomes Battery. It’s a survey kids take to measure whether camp has increased their independence, friendship, confidence, interest in exploration, perceived competence, problem-solving ability, responsibility, spiritual well-being, family citizenship, teamwork affinity with nature and sense of connectedness.

• Camps pick the qualities they wish to measure, some of which line up with the “21st century skills,” a buzzword for abilities thought to be needed in a changing economy, particularly critical thinking, communication, creativity and collaboration.

• Camps may still have traditional activities such as swimming and archery and they may be located in beautiful wilderness areas, but the new focus is youth development, according to the American Camp Association.
• Camps may still have traditional activities such as swimming and archery and they may be located in beautiful wilderness areas, but the new focus is youth development, according to the American Camp Association.
Efforts to push these skills in school and out of school are hailed by organizations such as the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, a business- and educator led group.

Critics, however, say the skills are presented in such a generalized way as to be meaningless and they are not new.

What’s to prove?

But in a world of data and evidence, the camp association wants to show its impact. The survey data is helpful for camp leaders to see what’s working well in their programs and what could be improved, Holland said.

The camp association is positioning itself as a partner in education in order to convince today’s parents of camp’s value.

“More and more parents are asking the question: ‘What is my child going to get out of this?’” Holland said.

“This is giving our camps the tools,” he said.

It’s about intentionality, he said. “Are you intentional about what outcomes the children will walk away with?” And then are you translating and sharing that information with parents?”

Scott Brody is a former national vice president of the American Camp Association and owner of Camps Kenwood and Evergreen in Wilmot, N.H.

He recently expanded his camp business into China, where affluent parents are looking to give their children an edge in a competitive economy.

He envisions a partnership between camps and schools to strengthen 21st century skills in kids.

Every activity in camp could be matched with one of the learning outcomes, he said.

Last year, Brody was quoted in an article in the Yale Globalist about the expansion of American-style camps in China.

“When you look at the entrepreneurial and innovation skill set, a lot of what you need are the qualities that people get to practice at camp—creativity, communication, collaboration, and building your own sense of resilience,” Brody said. “All of these themes are interwoven with the American dream. And the opportunity to practice these skills is the critical novelty of the camp environment.”

At the camp association conference Brody spoke about the value of the Youth Outcome Battery.

“We’re talking about outcomes and measures that are valued in the business world and in schools,” he said.

“It’s a huge marketing advantage,” Brody said. Parents are looking for experiences that give the child an advantage, that add value.”

“We are in the college and career readiness business,” he said. “We are in the education business.”

reprinted from Youth Today

By Stell Simonton | February 23, 2016