• Counsellor's Ideas Sheet
  
• Specialist's Ideas Sheet
  
  

With 53 days to fill with activity each summer, it's time to start thinking about some great things to do in your specialty area or with your cabin. Your ideas are a huge part of what makes each summer a unique and exciting experience for campers.

Rainy days are a perfect opportunity to put some of your ideas in place, there are plenty of indoor (and outdoor) places to enjoy spending some fun time with campers.

Try to "think outside the box," when planning some of your activities, suprise events and activities that take place outside of the regular scheduled periods are incredibly popular with campers.


Ideas for Counsellors top

Imagine 53 straight days of rain and cold, or imagine Camp White Pine without activities. As a counsellor, you should come to camp prepared with many ideas of how to productively spend time with your campers when you have no activities scheduled, or when weather prohibits you from participating in activities.

Implementing a theme or project idea, and rainy day or free time program ideas, will help your cabin group have a bonding experience during which they are not dependent on activity areas.

A GOOD PLAN FOR A CABIN THEME SHOULD INCLUDE:

(1) The length of time a cabin will be involved and the frequency of involvement.
(2) Specialty areas to be involved.
(3) A list of books that will spark interest in the theme.
(4) A list of supplies needed.
(5) Campers should provide most of the ideas with help from their counsellors.

Some examples of cabin activities:

A Theme for Younger Children: Holidays

Halloween: Create and distribute a 'trick or treat' poem, make costumes and masks, carve pumpkins, trick or treat, have a party!

Chanukah: Make latkes, dreidels, cover coins with foil, have a party!

Christmas: Decorate a 'theme' tree, make and send cards to friends, have a section postman, create a Santa Claus parade with other sections invited to make floats.

Thanksgiving: Live like pilgrims for a day or two, go to Pioneer Museum in Haliburton, make soap and/or candles, carve spoons, make home-made toys (e.g. corn husk or apple dolls, potato puppets, wallets, games in woodwork or A&C, costumes, etc.), have a square dance or hay ride, cook Thanksgiving meal, create a 'Town Council' and discuss issues relevant to Pioneer Days.

Holidays are a theme that an entire section can take part in over an extended period of time, each cabin taking a different holiday and culminating the theme by campers going from event to event.

A Theme for Older Sections: A Newly Discovered Race in Space

In the course of space travel, we have encountered a race of people who have three arms and one leg. They have asked for our help in creating clothing, homes, utensils, tools, industry, songs, a written language code, children's and adult literature, movies, plays, holidays, advertising, magazines, transportation, cities, governments, an education system, community services, recipes given the foods they grow, any condition to create the same challenge - e.g. change the amount of gravity. Such a theme could generate sufficient activities and discussions to keep a cabin or section busy all summer!


To submit your ideas, you can fill out the form below, or use the Counsellor's Ideas sheetin our spring mailing and return it to the office by mail. You must submit your ideas by May 15th. We look forward to hearing your ideas!

Ideas for Specialists top