Top Tips For Success At CampPosted by Beigette Gill on June 14, 2017

As a family you’ve decided for your daughter to attend camp.  Now what?  The preparations for camp can be overwhelming.  Not only for your daughter, but also for you as camp parents.  The coming days and weeks will be filled with purchasing last minute camp gear and packing.  It is also important to prepare for your daughter’s departure to camp and her transition into life at Fernwood Cove.  The Fernwood Cove directors have compiled their top tips for success at camp.  We hope that these tips will help you, and your daughter, as she prepares for her upcoming camp adventures.

Age-Old Advice from Our Directors

The Fernwood Cove Directors have over fifty years experience working in camping.  Through those years they have learned a multitude of things that help campers, CITs, and staff transition in to life at camp.  Here are their top tips:

Top Tips for Success at Camp

• Encourage new things- new foods, new activities, new people.
• Try to make the most of each day and take advantage of its opportunities.
• Prepare as a parent.  This is a huge opportunity for your daughter(s). Keeping busy and engaged will help avoid being “camper sick”
• Focus on the positive; memories to be made and friendships
• Connect with your Cove Sister – a camp big or little sister is an awesome resource!
• Make goals for the summer, parent and camper alike, do something out of your comfort zone
• Allow your daughter(s) to take on the responsibility of being on their “own” for three weeks, but know they are being cared for by amazing our staff
• Label everything- From sweatshirts to water bottles labeling is key!
• Make sure to include letter writing materials and returned addressed envelopes in the packing list, they have so much fun they don’t remember their address sometimes!
• Enjoy the little things! Whether its spending time with your bunk family or singing campfire songs, these are the moments that make summer camp fly by!

Truly Live Camp Life

Whether nervous or excited, know this will be an extraordinary experience. It will broaden your daughter’s horizon and her perceptions on not only people, but different ways of life. Taking a break from the ordinary world and experience a simple way of living prepares them with the life skills they will utilize for years to come. Not to mention creating friendships that feel like family and memories that we never forget. Though they leave their comfort zone of everyday life, they will leave camp with the satisfaction of gaining a second home. A home that takes away the distractions of this forever evolving digital world, and instead will surround them with the skills to build strong friendships and an amazing summer!

Making the decision to attend a sleep away camp can be overwhelming. Not only for the child but also the parent. Three weeks away from home can feel like a lifetime.  Sometimes preparing your daughter prior to camp and using the tips above will make the transition from home life to camp life easier.  At Fernwood Cove we often say a day is a week, a week is a month and a month is a year. However, spending this time learning to appreciate the little things, making 200 friends that feel like sisters, and accomplishing things you never thought possible is the culture of camp. This will be an extraordinary experience that will open your daughters perspective and grow in a positive light.  We hope that these top tips for success at camp will help you and your daughter have an extraordinary summer.