Session 4 Day 4: Good Times!
- Dave
- Jul 24
- 3 min read
Our luck continues to hold with the weather. We have been incredibly fortunate this week. We were prepared for a rainy week, but have had only a few brief showers so far. The bonus of the cool weather and nice breeze has made it a very pleasant week all around (so far).
The youth campers finished up the last of their regular rotation activities this morning. They had the following activities.
Red/Pink Team: Table-top games and Cooperative games
Blue Team: Cooperative games and Climbing
Orange Team: Archery and Pond play
If I haven't talked about Cooperative games, they are a series of small games that are designed to get the campers to work together to solve a problem. They sometimes combine the whole team to complete a task together and sometimes the team will be split into two or more groups to compete against each other. Either way, they require teamwork, critical thinking, and communication to complete the task. The exact games played by each team can be tailored according to their age, personalities, etc.
Now that the regular activity rotation is finished, we are moving on to our "free choice" activities. The campers are given a list of 5 or 6 activities to choose from and they will get a chance to do 3 of those today and tomorrow. The activities can be something that they would like to do a second time, or it may be a new activity. The choices this week were Zipline, archery, shrimping, crafts, and Frisbee golf. When looking for photos today, you will have to look through the team folders as well as the activity folders to find your children.
The Gray Team (teens) had another big day today. They had their river tracing trip. River tracing for the teens is a longer trip in a more challenging river. It takes the whole morning and they usually get back a bit later for lunch. Since they get back late, and because they are usually quite tired out after river tracing, they get a free period after lunch.
For the last activity period, both teens and youth campers played Rainbow Tag. The campers are divided into teams and given bandanas in the colors of the rainbow, which they hang from their pocket or waistband. Each team then goes off to a home base. When the bell rings, they are free to roam. They have to capture a person from the team in the next color in the rainbow by grabbing the bandana from their pocket. So red is trying to catch orange, orange is trying to catch yellow and so on. When someone catches a camper (red captures orange, for example), the captured (orange) camper has to take the (red) captor back to their base, where a counselor is waiting with a colored face-painting marker- orange in this case. They will put a stripe on the captor's arm. That camper then goes on to catch the next color in the rainbow (yellow). It gets more challenging as the game goes on because you don't know who is chasing you. The winner is the first person to get a stripe for every color of the rainbow.
When the campers have finished their dinner, we will begin our even program. Tonight is Party Night—one of the most anticipated events of the week. The counselors dress up and run booths modeled after games you might find at an American carnival or a Taiwanese night market. Campers use their tokens to try their luck and skill at the various games. As the evening goes on, the lights dim and the music turns up, transforming the field into a lively dance party. It’s always a camper favorite, and tonight promises to be just as unforgettable.
As always, below is a link to the pictures of the day.
