Weblog
Sunday, 15 February 2009
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Changing of the Guard
Jeremy's week of Canadian snowboarding comes to an end today (assuming he decides to come back!) and I leave early in the morning for a meeting of American Camp Association (ACA) delegates in Orlando. So we have a sort of changing of the guard taking place here in the office.
It was a busy week here in the office, made a bit busier for me by Jeremy's absence. Except for Cheryl T. coming in a couple of times to help out with some office mailings, it was kind of quiet. Last weekend we attended our final camp fair in New Jersey for the year, at the Delbarton School. Paula joined me for that fair and, as always, she brought her full-force of camp energy and enthusiasm. While we chatted up camp with families at the fair, Stu had a full day of tours up in Blairstown. As Jeremy wrote, the Week 9 and Weekend Adventure materials were completed and proofread (with some extra help from summer camp office manager Sharon!) and posted on the website. Don't worry, we'll be mailing them out also, but as usual you'll always read camp info first on the website. Speaking of mailings, all the pieces for what we call the "first parent packet" are finally done and (you guessed it) posted on the website. We've had the Riso cranking away here in CK-NJ Land, printing out all the health forms, clothing lists and other information that we'll be mailing out to enrolled camp families soon.
A highlight of the week was my trip up to Blair to meet with the foodservice director, Sue. We talked about camp menus and all the details of meals and snacks for the coming summer. Since this is our first summer at Blair, I brought the official Frito pie recipe and presented it to Sue. She had never heard of it (imagine!), but will definitely incorporate it into our menus. And we talked about barbecues, ice cream, vegetarian entrees, salad bar, allergies, scheduling and serving and lots more. Sue's had 19 years experience serving school and camp populations and she's excited to work with CK-NJ this summer.
Then our buddy, Dave, one of the main guys at Blair, told me that the school has acquired an additional 125 acres of land out behind the golf course and woods as a buffer. The property was a Girl Scout camp many years ago and has a lake, Lake Genevieve. We're looking forward to doing some fishing there, as well as having campfires by the lakeshore and maybe even some sleep-outs. When the snows melt a bit more, we'll go exploring and let you know more about our plans. In the meantime, I've included a photo of the lake that I took yesterday when I was doing tours at camp. It's a pretty gray winter day, but you begin to get the idea.
Speaking of the golf course, we're looking forward to including that in our program, too, but I'll save that news for another blog.
I'll be back in the office mid-afternoon Wednesday. Check in on Jeremy, if you like, so he won't get too lonely. Oh, and a big Happy Birthday on Monday to Vanessa.!
Tom
Friday, 06 February 2009
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Banff, Here I Come!
Okay... So in about one hour I will be heading home to go pack up for a week long vacation at Banff National Park in Canada! Woot! Vanessa and I will be meeting a friend from Calgary up there and doing a heck of a lot of sowboarding. Everyone says the mountains are beautiful up there and the hot springs are not to be missed. I am very eager to experience it all and promis to come back and bore you (or make you jealous) with lots of pictures!
Before I leave, I did want to let you know that I just handed Tom the promotional materials for the Week 9 Adventure Road Trip and this summer's Weekend Adventures. As soon as he proof reads it, it will appear on the CK-NJ page of our website! Keep an eye out for that and sign up! Ryan and I are both really excited about Week 9. We really want lots of campers to sign up and take part in this amazing program!
See you in a week,
Jeremy
Friday, 30 January 2009
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Wearing Many Hats
What do you have to be good at to be a camp director? Roast a marshmallow without burning it up? Maintain a smile and motivate 400 people to have fun in the pouring rain? Be able to explain to a mom why it's a good thing that her daughter hasn't called home all week? Well, these are some handy skills. But probably the most important one is to be versatile: be a "jack of all trades" and "wear many hats". Because it turns out that camp directors end up doing a little bit of everything.
Jeremy and I were talking about this earlier in the week when, suddenly, our main database failed to properly produce the beautiful merge letters we were used to getting with a few simple keystrokes. So we quickly switched hats and became "database troubleshooters". Now I have to admit that, at first, all I wanted to do was smash the offending machine (see photo). Try and try as we might, we just ended up with more paper to feed into our shredder. But then we remembered, "We're camp people. We can fix anything!" And so I put down my hammer and we went to work and, eventually, solved the problem.
That's how it is in the camp world. One minute we're interviewing a counselor applicant, the next we're creating a new web page, then we're consulting with a nurse about updates to the camp health plan, followed by planning the construction of another ga-ga pit, after which we're updating menus, figuring out bus routes or designing a staff training session. On any given day we might be writing articles for our newsletter or collating and stapling it together. We might be planning the summer camp budget or sorting out the unclaimed lost and found for the charity bin. We could be planning a reunion party or opening the mail.
Some of it is exciting, some a little less so. But since it's all about camp, we love what we do. If "variety is the spice of life", then we have very spicy jobs!
Tom
Friday, 23 January 2009
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New Stuff!
Okay... It's been a crazy, busy month and I've got a lot of stuff to tell you about!
First up: We've picked a bunk group theme for camp this summer! It's "Around the World in 40 Days". As we looked at all the theme suggestions sent in, the most popular were all about the countries of the world. Tom and I were thinking that's probably influenced by all the great international counselors we had at camp last summer from places like Columbia, England, Wales, Australia, Scotland, Mexico, New Zealand, Germany, and Ireland! We're going to celebrate a different culture every day at announcements. PLEASE NOTE: Our counselors choose the bunk group names from the suggestions you send in. Please click here and give us your suggestions for the names of bunk groups!
Second: There is a new online photo game up on the website now! All you have to do is fill in the chat bubbles for the pictures. It's great fun. Enter as often as you like here. You can also view the past winners here to give you some ideas.Next: We're putting together the next issue of the Sundial next week. That doesn't mean it's too late to send in an article, poem, letter or piece of artwork. You can email it to us at sundial@campuskids.com or fax it to 973-845-9262. In this issue we'll be introducing the leadership team, some of the staff assistants and some of the campers!
Also: You may have heard some rumors regarding a special project Ryan and I have been working on. We're calling it WEEK 9! That's right folks! We're going on a weekend adventure-style road trip across Pennsylvania and checking out everything cool. We'll be stopping at Hershey Park, Skirmish USA, an indoor water park and much, much more! The trip will feature two nights of camping and 4 nights of staying at hotels. We're even planning a Week 9 talent show so start practicing. The trip we'll be like a week-long Weekend Adventure getaway. Campers entering 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th grade are eligible to go on Week 9. All the details for Week 9 will be added to the website in the coming week or so. There will be a write up in the Sundial as well! And before I forget, we're finalizing the details for Weekend Adventures for next summer and that information will go out some time in February.
Finally, on an unrelated note, I got a new snowboard and I can't wait to ride it! As soon as I do, I'm going to post some pics from the slopes.
Keep checking the website for new content!
Take care,
Jeremy
Monday, 19 January 2009
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It's Camp Fair Season!
January is many things to many people. It's skiing and snowboarding time. The start of spring semester at college. Football playoff season. Inauguration month. It's even National Oatmeal Month.
But in the camp world, it's also Camp Fair Time! This year Campus Kids is being represented at many camp fairs in the NJ-NY-CT region (here's the schedule). Weekends are busy for us because some of our staff are at the camp fairs while others are conducting the tours out at camp.
This past weekend, for instance, I had the pleasure of touring a number of families around our beautiful Blair campus -- a real winter wonderland experience. Meanwhile, Ryan was doing his second weekend of camp fairs, Saturday in Eatontown (assisted by Stevey) and Sunday in Bridgewater (assisted by Paula, as you can see from the photo).
At a camp fair, anywhere from 25 to 60 camps of all kinds set up their booths and provide information to the parents and kids who come by looking for camp information. It's fun to meet everyone (whatever camp they choose) because talking about camp is always FUN! We like helping people learn more the fantastic world of summer camp and giving them tips for choosing the right camp for their children. Campus Kids stands out because we are the only weekday sleep-away camp and because we give kids daily choice of their activities. Plus we have such a wide variety of activities and we offer the choice of a campus camp or a cabin camp.
So remember, it may be National Hot Tea Month, but it's also Camp Fair Season!
Tom
CampusKidsNJ
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- Name: Campus Kids-NJ
- Member Since: 3/17/2008
