What Camp Makerie is Really All About
We call it the MAGIC of camp. The campers think its the cardboard forts, joke battles, marshmallow fights, or the super fun shark water slide, but its not. The magic of camp is how far these amazing kids will go to make camp special for others around them. Its radical kindness and empathy and it spreads across camp like magic. Its speaking up for yourself to communicate your needs and boundaries with care for others too. Its finishing the week having built something more awesome than you could have done alone. Its letting go of all the pressures of the outside world and just being silly and letting loose with an entire camp of kids (no matter how old you are), and taking a piece of that incredible experience home with us.
Camp is about having fun …and so much more.
Camp Makerie is all about building community together.
​Having fun is great, we love it, kids love it, and we do have a ton of it, but it is not the goal of our camp. The goal of Camp Makerie is to build kids up. We want to see kids grow in positive ways in their relationship to their community, their friends and themselves.
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Sometimes, to grow as people we need to do things that are not fun, like apologize to someone we have hurt, or share something we would rather keep to ourselves. When we do these things we are building something valuable: relationships with others and the ability to form a community. For us having fun is a tool (Look at the amazing things we can do together!) and the result of all that hard work is nothing short of MAGIC.
Building Character - Lets do something hard!
At camp we intentionally build character in a few ways
Building with Kindness, Respect, and Teamwork!
These are our camp expectations for every camper and staff.
BE KIND: with words and bodies (even when we are having a problem or someone wasn't kind to you)
RESPECT CAMP: the space and materials (Use things the way they were meant to be used!) to keep ourselves and others around us safe.
WORK AS A TEAM: do your part, include others, encourage each other, and stay together
AWESOME POSSUM SHOUT OUTS!
Campers are encouraged to look for ways they can do something big or small to brighten someones' day at camp. We call this being an AWESOME POSSUM! This could be giving someone a compliment or inviting them to sit with you, or helping them in a task they have. At 2 points in the day, the campers are given an opportunity to give a shout out to anyone in the group that was an Awesome Possum for them that day and tell who it was and why. Everyone wants a shout out, it feels amazing to get one! So being an Awesome Possum is the way to go.
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The Challenge of the Day!
Every morning the camper groups solve a puzzle to unveil the challenge of the day! Each day has a challenge, something they can try to accomplish in the day that shows good character. Its totally optional but any camper that completes the challenge of the day collects a pin-able button for that challenge. No challenge is repeated in the summer, and kids love showing off their challenge collections each week.
Leadership Challenges
Campers in older Groups are eligible for leadership buttons. Leadership buttons are given to campers who not only follow the rules of camp but go above and beyond to lead others in making camp a better place in one of the following areas:
Handling Problems With Intention
Our staff model and support kids to use Social Emotional Learning and Success Counseling strategies to help campers feel confident to handle the ups and downs of relationship building with their peers.
No one grows without doing things that are hard, no one makes something awesome without having to push themselves at some point.
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OUR CAMPFIRE CIRCLES!
At the end of our day of playing, building, and having fun together, each team circles up around a campfire. (NO not a real one - but its really super magical), they take a few quiet moments to reflect on their day and all that they accomplished together. When ready each camper has a turn with the magical talking wands and puts the magic from their day into the campfire by sharing highs and lows and moments they were proud of, and any other memorable thing they wish to add to the magic of camp. This exercise takes a lot of trust in your team to share and respectful patience to listen while your friends share. This is by far the most mentioned part of camp that campers say is their favorite part of Camp Makerie, and it brings a beautiful ending to the camp day. Oh and sometimes there are silly campfire songs.
No one grows without doing things that are hard, no one makes something awesome without having to push themselves at some point.
Having fun is a tool that Camp Makerie uses to help kids grow, if we work together to create something amazing, if we work through our disagreements with kindness, if we challenge ourselves to do something every day to make someone else's day better, thats when the MAGIC happens!
