Camp Twin Creeks | Camp Twin Creeks - Part 4

2 recent ‘Lightbulb Moments’

2 recent ‘Lightbulb Moments’

Morning!

I wanted to share a couple of great nuggets of wisdom our team of camp professionals picked up recently at the Tri-State camping conference.  We’ll be sharing these with our camp counselors during staff training this summer and also throughout the summer with our campers to make our culture full of even more positive energy and direction.

Sometimes as parents and camp counselors we view a routine task as a chore rather than a privilege.  I ‘have to’ take my kid to soccer practice or ‘have to’ walk the dog in a few minutes.  We’re going to ask our staff this summer to replace this thought process with ‘get to’  and to appreciate the opportunities we all enjoy on any given day.  Try it!  The founder of the ‘Life is Good’ company introduced this to us and our team universally loved the idea.

Our next pearl of wisdom will be used by camp counselors and especially those that teach our wide range of activities at camp!  ‘Yet’…………..

A camper may have trouble making a lay-up and express frustration and comment ‘I CANNOT make a lay-up!!!!’  By responding in a calm manner and looking the young camper in the eye with ‘yet’ our counselors will convey confidence and let them know that together they can work on this.  We want our campers to have a can do attitude both at camp and at home and we’re hoping this simple response and attitude can help that.

Try these out and be ready for your camper to come home after their time at Twin Creeks recalling some of these phrases and much more!

100 Days….

Thanks to the magic of the internet I know that in precisely 100 days (at the time of writing; legal requirement ;-) a few things will be happening in our camp world…

#1 I’ll be celebrating my 42nd birthday……..I know so hard to believe
#2 Waterfront, Leadership and Horseback Riding staff will be arriving at Camp for their own week of intensive and specialized training
#3 Some staff will already be 2+ weeks into our summer stay in the beautiful Allegheny Mountains of WVWith this being said, it is such good news to know that the true heart of the summer is a mere 100 days away.  That means we all have so much to do, right?

Our camp families need to make medical appointment to get those forms signed and figure out what clothes still fit from last summer – and what items just never recovered from all they were put through in 2015!

We need to complete our staff recruitment and bring in another amazing team of people dedicated to giving your child a truly wonderful experience at Camp!  Luckily we have a core of staff that return each summer and those that grew up at camp as a child and now plan to return as a member of our staff.  What a great way to ensure our fun and silly traditions continue; and our culture of emotional and physical safety, happiness and fun is also in safe hands as these young adults dedicate themselves to our cause once again.

New programs need to be added and new stuff needs to be built too!  Our leadership staff head to the biggest camping conference in the world next week.  We’ll all walk away with a renewed excitement for both the 2016 summer and our fortunate position we find ourselves in – summer camp professionals.  Look out for these changes and additions as the summer approaches – newsletters will be sent out in regular intervals so you do not miss a thing!

With 100 days to go, don’t panic but start thinking about the summer.  Plan and prepare mentally – get your child thinking about the fun stuff they’ll get to do and start building their confidence now; they might even need to borrow some confidence from you.  

Visit our website often, watch the video, tour virtually every part of camp, walk through a typical day and become more familiar.  If questions arise during this process please just ask.  We offer a myriad of options for question-asking; phone, email, live chat, new parent nights, home visits, spring gathering…

Thanks for your time and, more importantly, thanks for choosing summer camp for your child this summer!