Day Camp

wikipedia: Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time.


I'm a creative person but not an artistic person.  Cub scout day camp is my chance to be a performance artist. This was my 9th camp (8th year) as program director.  (The 2nd year I did camp I ran two camps.)

I truly feel like an artist with day camp because I begin with the theme I'm assigned, dream up classes that go with the theme, add in fun extra elements, and finally get to see my vision become reality when camp starts.  I look around and see cubs at my stations, happily engaged with adults who are presenting fun information and I feel like a true artist.  It's also always amazing that it "works".  Then, four days later my artistic creation is nothing but memories and a few items the boys bring home with them.

This year's theme was "All American Sports".  I wasn't very excited about it to begin with because I don't follow any professional sports.  Offered free tickets to a sporting event, I politely decline while I think to myself, "they'd have to pay me a lot of money to go".  But, I applied my creative juices to the theme and it turned out to be a successful camp.  I can gauge how well the boys are enjoying the camp by how many boys we have spending time at headquarters in time out.  If it's a great class, they don't want to miss out and make sure to behave.  We didn't  have any time outs this year.  Hooray! 

We had 120 cubs with 60 adult and teen age volunteers.  It doesn't matter how many fun classes I plan, the favorite activities are always archery and bb guns.

We had some fun classes in the "sports" theme including playing with footballs, soccer balls, and baseball.  The cubs were able to earn 5 belt loops: archery, bb guns, map & compass, badminton, and kickball. 

They also completed 3 wood projects

did outdoor cooking....

learned about two of my favorite sports,

orienteering,

and geocaching.

I take photos of all the dens to send home with the boys and they always want to do a silly photo.

The boys can earn prizes through showing scout spirit.  I collect things all year from the free box at garage sales, giveaways at events, and anywhere else I can scrounge things the boys would want.  I pay the kids 25 cents for unopened Happy Meal toys.  This year, the prizes were dumped into two large inflatable sports coolers.  They spent a lot of time pawing through looking for the perfect prize.

Since it was a sports theme, and I'm the program director, I try to have a hat or costume that goes with the theme.  This year, I was the referee.  I blew the whistle to let them know it was time to go to a new class.

This photo was taken at 8:00 pm on Thursday night, after four days of running camp, taking down camp Thursday night, and unpacking everything at home.

To go with our sports theme, we handed out trophies to all the boys at our closing exercises.  The dens all came up and performed a short skit before being handed their certificate and trophy.  The boy's eyes were drawn to the trophies like magnets and they had a difficult time getting their focus on their skits.  I was watching carefully, worrying that we wouldn't have enough.  We ended up with four extra trophies.

Every year, when camp is over I lay in bed that night with Dode talking about what we could do better/different next year.  It usually involves extra work for him!  When I first started doing camp, our whole group events were held in the field with me in the front of the group yelling as loud as I could.  Then, we added a megaphone which helped but was still not a good solution since the sound was so narrowly projected.  To give the front where I stand more of a "stage", we added 12 core value flags in a semi circle. 

Our core value flags are the primary colored flags you see.  Each one has one of the 12 core values of cub scouting printed on it.  The white and yellow triangle flags are our national accreditation flags that we receive each year when our camp is inspected and meets BSA national standards.  We started flying those a few years ago.  We've accumulated quite a few!  Our new addition for this year was a sound system.  You can see a small round table under the red flag.  That has my PA system which is powered by a small generator we hid in a clump of trees.  Dode's speakers from the garage (formerly from the church building) were stuck up on poles and projected the sound nicely.  I used a wireless headset microphone which left me free to move around and engage in the kind of silliness that I do in front of the group like direct and sing action songs.  At first, I felt silly hearing my voice echoing off the trees but it helped so much.  The boys were quiet when they needed to be and we could actually hear the skits this year!  One of the dad volunteers who was a den leader teased me about my singing so I guess I'm a good example that you don't have to be THE best to get up and do something, you just have to do YOUR best.  I am the queen of PVC pipe, rebar and zip ties at day camp.  Poor Dode is stuck pounding all that rebar in. 

 I already know what I'm doing differently next year, I'm going to run a ribbon between each core value flag pole to keep the cubs back.  I had one walk right into the speaker on the pole and several tripping over speaker cords.  I'm also moving our gathering area closer to headquarters. You can see headquarters, it's the white canopy in the far distance, lined up with the flagpole of the red flag closest to the camera.   I ALWAYS forget something back at headquarters and am left sprinting back to get it with minutes to spare before I'm "on".  Three times a day I end up making the trip twice. 

I've been doing camp for so long that planning the program isn't terribly difficult so I keep trying to make it better by adding more to it.  Here are some things we've added over the years that I believe are unique to Camp McKinley.  We have a joke flag that we fly.  One of the teen helpers wears a jester hat and when the flag is flying, he receives jokes and hands out Laffy Taffy.  I have metal juice lids with a special label on them that another teen hides throughout the camp during the day.  Once found, the cub scouts bring them to headquarters for a prize.  We also have a daily riddle or puzzle relating to the theme that when the cub scout solves, they receive smarties candy.  To make our ceremonies more fun, I have a big fuzzy white wig and lab coat that one of the teenagers puts on to become "Salbert Finestein", the long lost nephew of Elbert Einstein. He shares deep thoughts with the boys like, "If you cut off your left arm, your right arm will be left".  I'm always on the lookout for more ways to make camp fun so if you have any suggestions, send them my way!