Session 6 Day 1

We’re off to a great start at Camp Taiwan! This morning’s pickup went smoothly, and we appreciate all the parents for helping us get everyone on the way to camp on time.

After arriving, campers had a chance to settle into their tents, unpack their belongings, and meet the other members of their groups. From there, each team jumped into some icebreakers and name games. These first activities are a good way for campers to begin making new friends and for counselors to start getting to know everyone in their group. This week is a smaller session than we have had in the previous weeks, so it is nice to really get to know all the campers.

Before moving into the day’s activities, we gathered for camper orientation. Each tent group went over our expectations for the week and signed the Camp Taiwan Community Standards and Behavior Agreement. Creating a safe, positive, and respectful environment is very important to us, and this helps make sure everyone understands those expectations from the beginning. You’ll find a photo of each tent group with their signed agreement in the photos folder.

For families who are new to camp, our daytime schedule is divided into four 90-minute activity periods. Campers travel with their color teams and rotate through different activities throughout the week.

Today’s first rotations were:

Red Team: Frisbee Golf

Blue Team: Cooperative Games(a series of short games designed to challenge campers to work together)

Orange Team: Catapult Games

Catapult Games deserves a little more explanation. To go along with our medieval theme, campers will build their own catapults using PVC pipe. Once construction is complete, they’ll put them to the test with a variety of challenges involving launching soft balls at different targets. It is a great hand-on learning experience, and we incorporate a little bit of competitive spirit as well.

For our final activity period, all of the youth campers joined together for the first Wide Game of the week. Today we had Relay Games, with campers moving through a series of short challenges, each lasting about 15 minutes.

After a busy afternoon, everyone headed down for showers and then gathered in the dining hall for a well-earned dinner.

Tonight, we’ll finish our first day with one of our favorite Camp Taiwan traditions: the opening campfire. The counselors have some games and songs prepared, and we’ll end the evening by roasting s’mores around the fire.

There is a Drobox link to today’s photos below. If you aren’t sure which team your child is on, the easiest place to start is the tent pictures folder. Once you find your child, look at the color of the lanyard attached to their name tag. That color shows which team they are on. Most photos from the day will then be found either in that team’s folder or in the folder for whole-camp activities.

That’s it for our first-day update. It has been a fun and busy start to the session, and everyone is settling in well. We’re looking forward to another full day of camp tomorrow!

Dropbox link