Are you having trouble with your camp themes, theme meals, campfires, activities, pre-meal fun, special events, evening activities, etc.? Unless you’re doing the same thing as last year, you have questions and concerns about the new things your planning.
Let’s see if I can help (well, me and my crack network of camp professionals). Email me your question or ask it in the comments below. Please keep your questions to programming. While I have ideas and suggestions for marketing, training, etc., my real passion and expertise is in programming.
So what’s your question?
hey curt,
we met at the aca conference…ya know the aliens at the heart camp…haha. well if you have a chance, i’d love to get some ideas on good counselor skits.
thanks!
leslie aka beaker
Hi Leslie. How could I forget the alien abduction? I am going to start putting up the skits tomorrow (Thursday). I will put up my favorites that I have put into a script format. Let me know if you need anything else.
I’m looking for ideas for the summer day camp I’m running. We need a theme for the last day. Last year it was Olympics, and we had all of the kids participating in different Olympic events that we created, for this year.. I’m stuck!
Hi Tiffany, I have a post of 100 camp themes. Have you looked through them? Are you looking for a theme that would have multiple things going on at one time like the Olympics? If so then I’m thinking Around the World in 80 Days (er, 6 hours) or Time Travelers. You can have multiple stations for each of these themes.
In Around the World you can have campers visit different parts of the world. Each place would have activities, games, food, trivia, songs and/or crafts specific to that region.
In Time Travelers each “station” or area of camp would be a different time period. Each time period would consist of skits, activities, reenactments, scavenger or treasure hunts, trivia, challenges and/or crafts.
Let me know if you have more specific questions. I hope this helps.
Hi Curt. I came across your website whilst searching for themes for upcoming camps at my camp. My name is Terry and I’m the programming manager at Sugar Bay, the only ACA accredited camp in South Africa. As you know our country is hosting the Soccer World Cup and over that time our school holidays are 5 weeks long so we’ll be full! i have 4 main ideas for the holiday weeks during that period: backpacking, “have a ball,” Lumo and superstars. Would it be possible to tell me what you think you would do ideas wise or anything else that bounces through your mind?
Thanks in advance!!
Hi Terry, I went to your website. The camp looks great and it’s crazy cool that it’s ACA accredited. Who the heck do you get to do your site visits? Anyway, let me think on your question a bit and I’ll get back to you.
Okay Terry, I created a post to answer your programming question. Check out http://summercampprogramdirector.com/world-cup-2010/
Hi Curt. I’ve been going through your suggestions and browsing around this blog and the recreation guy one too… thank you so much for your help. You’re a legend.
My pleasure, Terry.
I PLAN TO HAVE FUN THIS SUMMER USING THE “MINUTE TO WIN IT SHOW”.
Hi Curt! I’m looking to program an “international” week and a magic week. I’m having trouble coming up with ideas for both. I also have an Olympics week planned and I’m trying to avoid repeats. I am running a computer camp (I run the general portion of it) for older kids. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
For your international week check out this post for ideas.
For magic week I would, of course, teach them appropriate magic tricks for stage, parlor, close-up and street. Teach them how to do their own show, what patter is, an how to change up some of the tricks and illusions. I teach an after school magic class and when we do a show for other kids they get nervous about having to talk, so we put the show to music. I use a techno CD that they love and mix in some other genres of music that works for the show. I would also highlight some of the great magicians in history. Since this is camp you should also have the typical camp activities like games, crafts, etc.
With Olympics I would simply have either traditional Olympic games or crazy Olympic games like races on tricycles or Olympic water balloon tosses, complete with medals and a chosen song for their “country”.
Thanks so much for the great ideas! So fantastic to meet another magician in the field! It truly is its own genre of magic! Thanks again!
Any ideas for 2nd graders theme of mission impossible for camp?? word scrambles…scavenger hunts..any ideas..at a loss here!
thanks
Hi, Curt. Thank you so much for sharing your wealth of camp ideas. I am helping to put together a day camp for kids in grades K-3 and our team plans to use many of the ideas found on your page. We would like to do a Career theme one week and are stumped on activities and games that would fit within this theme. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you!
Hi, Myra. It depends on the careers you’ll be exploring. You might want to get professionals of different careers to come visit camp. I was a part of a Youth Emergency Services camp that introduced teens to various careers. Check out http://summercampprogramdirector.com/theme-of-the-day-emergency-services/.
Robin, you’re not the only one. Mission Impossible theme is my Achilles Heel. I have such a hard time with this theme. And doing this theme with 2nd graders is even more of a challenge. I’ll think about it and get back to you.
curt,
my church has a little summer day camp for a week every year, and the pastor always trys to challange us. my sister, two older cousins, and i’s challge for next year is to plan the whole thing. we are all teens and are very new at this. we need a little help gettin started, got any ideas?..thank you.
Hi Tea, sounds like a fun challenge. What do you need help with – a theme, games, activities, marketing? I’d love to help you out with some ideas. I need a little more info on what you need, what your current ideas are, and what you have done in the past that you liked or didn’t like for this camp.
I am looking for ideas on how to break color war. Last year we set the camp on fire (SMOKE BOMBS & MACHINES) and had fire trucks and police and it was AMAZING. NEED TO TOP IT…
would love any help possible…
ASL, if every year gets bigger and bigger when does it stop? Anyway, here are some suggestions…
1. Get a celebrity.
2. Have some sort of special ops team come in as though they are taking over the camp.
3. Have a full on concert with an amazing band – complete with light show and pyrotechnics.
4. Fireworks
5. Skydiver
6. Watch past openings of the Olympics for ideas.
7. Have a crew in HazMat suits come and quarantine the camp off due to a virus/outbreak.
8. Stage a police car chase and shoot out that comes onto camp.
9. Create an alien space ship with lots of lights and weird sounds. Then wake the campers at 2am with the strange sounds and lights. Have aliens coming out of the ship.
What’s the best way to program a week’s (season’s) activities and give it to the counselors?
Do you post the schedule , give it out individually , announce it daily, or do it for the whole season (40 days) at once?
We have 8 periods per day, boys and girls – ages 3-15 and are an “all-activity” general day camp.
Sasha,
I let my staff know at the beginning of the season each week’s theme. The staff may want to plan activities, costumes or such at the beginning of the season for the different themes.
At the beginning of the week I will let my staff know about any big, themed activities planned for the week and give them a basic overview of what is happening.
At the beginning of each day I give them the schedule of the day. We have a 10 minute meeting each day and Monday’s meeting is 20-30 minutes.
The staff (and CITs) keep the schedule with them all day, some use clipboards and others fold it and keep it in their pocket. On the schedule I have the day’s activities, the names of all the kids and what groups they are in and a checklist that helps the counselors award camp beads to all their campers.
As for programming the week, are you asking about rotating between activities or how I set-up a typical day of activities?
Hello Curt,
I am currently working on and preparing a father/child retreat coming up in the spring. The theme I’ve decided to go with is The Amazing Race, because there are several challenges and tasks they can complete at camp. However, each year they have a project that they do as a family. I was thinking of incorporating the project into the Race. There are about 100 people total and we have a $600 budget for the retreat. Do you have any ideas for what the project could be?
Thanks!
Okay, Hannah, so there are a lot of unanswered questions here. Where is the retreat? Is it at a camp or in a city? Are the “teams” traveling by car or is everything done in one location? Are you thinking of a project for your organization (a new bench) or just a general can-be-anything type of project? Since I don’t know the answers to these questions I have a few suggestions, but they may not work for your situation.
Those are some ideas to get you started. I hope they help. If you want me to think of a few more let me know more about your situation and how the rest of the race is being run.
Sorry for not giving you all the details! I am working at a camp in northern Minnesota, and the race will all be done on campgrounds. I was thinking for different roadblocks/ detours they could canoe across the lake, or bike. They would have to bake something or tye dye a shirt that takes around the same amount of time. Each year for the retreat they have a “project” or a craft type thing. In years past, they have done marshmallow shooters, build bird houses, build race cars, create rocket launcher and various things like that.
I was trying to think of a project that could go along with the race. I think a project from a different country – to go along with the race around the world theme would be neat. What do you think?
Thank you so much for your help!
Hannah, now that I have an idea of how things are going to work here are my suggestions (for what they are worth).
1. I love eating challenges. They are a staple of many reality challenge shows (Survivor, Amazing Race, Fear Factor). Each country has their odd foods. Insects that are prepared for consumption can be easily purchased online. You can also take certain ingredients and call it mystery meat from whatever country. Start with Spam. Then there’s always the Balut egg. Yuck!
2. How about the Egg Drop Challenge? This is where you use a variety of craft supplies to protect your egg when dropped from a specific height. Check the internet for supplies that are commonly used in this project/challenge. At each pit-stop or challenge teams earn another craft supply for their drop challenge.
3. You can also, have a variety of recycled goods that teams can create art out of. The recycled art must meet certain criteria for the teams to be able to move on (i.e. height or stability). Or you can give the teams a specific object you want their art to represent. For example, they must create a recycled piece of art that resembles a spider, or an object that depicts a certain country (i.e. the Eiffel Tower or a kangaroo).
4. Teams must learn a cultural dance. Have someone teach a dance that is popular in a different country. Once the teams can do the routine they get to move on.
5. Match the flags to the countries.
6. Have someone dress up as a leprechaun. Teams have to catch the leprechaun. If they find the pot of gold during the race they can skip this task.
7. Find toys that take a good amount of assembly. After the teams have assembled them properly, donate the toys. Toys can certainly have an international theme to them.
8. Have teams build a wood project. Once built they must then paint it. Wood projects could be book cases, cat scratching posts, DVD holders, small treasure boxes, yo-yos, etc. Check out this link for small project plans.
9. Gather currency from other countries at a currency exchange place or a bank and have the teams match the currency to the countries.
10. Have teams make an international musical instrument like a didgeridoo, conga drum or rain stick. You can get instructions at kinderart.com.
Check the library for multicultural art books that would have more ideas. I hope this helps. Have a great time. Let me know how it turns out. I would love to have a recap with pictures to post here. Have fun.