Tag: summer camp

Waterskiing Fun!

September 28th, 2011

We are blessed with a lot of natural physical gifts at Weequahic – a quiet setting, a beautiful tree lined camp, great field space, and incredible indoor facilities. However, when you ask the campers and our families what they like the most about our property, they always respond that it’s the lake.

Camp Weequahic is located on Sly Lake, a deepwater spring fed lake our campers enjoy on a daily basis. It’s a stone’s throw from our girls’ bunks and teems with activity every moment of every day. And, while it’s hard to determine which water program is the most fun, it would be hard to argue against our water ski program!

Many campers are introduced to waterskiing for the first time at Weequahic. With a set of docks reserved for our motor boats and a big lake to enjoy, our campers get a lot of time behind the boats on water skis, wakeboards, knee boards, and tubes.

During the program day, Weequahic’s professional staff of drivers and teachers support our campers as they get up on water skis or the wakeboard. Our boats are outfitted with a ‘boom’ a teaching aid that allows campers to learn to ski without being pulled on the rope. Once they’ve mastered the boom, they enjoy the long rope.

We find campers evenly split between water skiing and wakeboard (basically snowboarding on the water). Regardless, it’s our goal for them to ski as often as possible. That’s why we run the program every day of the summer and incorporate as many teaching spots as possible.

When campers aren’t improving their skills on skis, they are laughing and screaming around the lake with their friends on the tubes. Tubes are used as a fun outlet for all campers and each bunk is invited for a tube run or two each week. The look on our campers’ faces when they get off the tube is priceless – they simply could not have more fun!

A summer at camp would not be complete without having fun on the lake. We are thrilled to have a great lake at Camp Weequahic and can’t wait to see our campers enjoy it again in for Summer 2012!

Another Summer has Come to a Close…

September 6th, 2011

Here we are in September and another summer has come to a close.  We can’t believe how fast it flew by!  It truly is a privilege for us to be able to host so many campers each summer.  We’re sad that the Summer of 2011 is already over, but excited to begin planning for the Summer of 2012.  For us, our greatest challenge is to make each summer better than the previous.  That’s a hard thing to live up to when this summer was so amazing!  Collectively, we really couldn’t have asked for a better group of parents, campers, or staff members.  We know that all of you are what makes Camp Weequahic one of America’s finest summer camps!  We can’t wait to meet those who will be joining us for the first time in 2012 and to welcome back all of our friends!  To everyone, here’s to living 10 for 2…until our next 2!

The Importance of Being Creative

August 27th, 2011

Arts and Crafts at summer camp is more than just stringing together a few beads to make a bracelet or gluing some spray painted macaroni to a cardboard picture frame.  It’s a program that gives campers the opportunity to explore their creative interests in several different types of art by offering a diverse array of age appropriate projects.  Of course there are the traditional projects that are just plain fun, like paper mache and tie-dying.  However, many summer camps also offer campers the opportunity to try things that are not only artistic but could be useful skills or even careers, such as metal work, jewelry making, calligraphy, cartooning, or soap and candle making.  Just like sports programs at camp, many campers have discovered a passion in their summer camp’s Arts and Crafts programs that they later pursued further.

Another way in which summer camp Arts & Crafts programs benefit campers is by providing a creative outlet for children who are being given fewer chances to explore the arts in their school programs.  Ashfaq Ishaq, PhD, argues that without being given the appropriate opportunity to explore their creative sides, children will not learn how to combine creativity with acquired knowledge to reach their full potential.   Art encourages spontaneity and exploration, two things that allow us, as people, to be innovative and prolific in our thinking.  Creativity also refines problem solving skills by helping us understand how to think “outside the box” when traditional solutions aren’t practical.  All three qualities are considered crucial to success in a child’s education as well as their adulthood careers.  Summer camp Arts & Crafts programs also give campers the opportunity to try some projects that might not be available in traditional school art programs, such as throwing clay on a pottery wheel.

For many campers, summer camp has become a way of maintaining tradition in environments that are ever changing.  Faced with a fast paced, changing world in the winter, children can still depend on summer as a way to fall back on activities and hobbies that may not be greatly valued in conventional schools anymore but are useful and bring satisfaction.  Arts and Crafts may be a dying art within American school systems.  But it’s thriving within American summer camps.