The Best Summer Camp Around

Posted by Kendra | 0 comments

I grew up going to summer camp every year- a three-week camp at that. I looked eagerly forward each year to my time there, for it was at camp where I learned to water ski, map the night sky, and climb Yosemite’s Half Dome.

Summer camp was a formidable aspect of my experiences while growing up, and I know my brothers would say the same. Two of us went on to work at the camp we attended as campers for so many years, and all three of us have a place in our hearts for that very special property nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

In all those years growing up, I’m sure I assumed my children would attend the same camp my brothers and I did. It just didn’t occur to me that my husband and I might make different choices for our children.

There are several things that factor into our ultimate decision not to send our children to summer camp. First of all, that camp I attended from the time I was eight until I was seventeen? It now costs $2500 for a two-week session.  Nope, you didn’t read that wrong. As a child envisioning my future children attending summer camp, it never occurred to me that I would actually go on to have eight children, making a summer’s worth of camp for everyone come to a grand total of $20,000. Yeah, not exactly in the budget.

Secondly, nestled amongst the very good memories are the very bad memories. Romances begun entirely too young, and with no parental involvement. Some sketchy theology and a few college-aged camp counselors imparting their limited “wisdom”, and with no parental involvement. Midnight discussions of topics we ten-year-olds were in no way ready to discuss, and, again, with no parental involvement.

Let’s face it; a cabin-full of kiddos having a sleepover breeds childish/foolish behavior which is the antithesis of what we are trying to develop within the lives of our children. I don’t care how well we know the children, several hours of unsupervised conversation and behavior leads to foolishness (even with our own kids). If your kids share a room, you know what I mean. How often do you find yourself going in past bedtime to stop your kids from staying up too late and reasoning through Scripture together? Typically we are correcting disruptive childish behavior or unacceptable foolish behavior – not Godly behavior. Multiply those nightly episodes times the nights during summer camp and you have a recipe for a whole lot of stuff I never should have been exposed to or discussing without parental involvement.

Still, there are the many, many good memories of summer camp that both my husband and I have, and we did desire to give our children the best of a summer camp environment. So in the summer of 2004, our best friends and we decided it was high time we put on a summer camp for our own kids, right in our own backyard.

We wanted to include the best things about camp, and we did. “Cabin” inspection (their kids had to tidy the room they’d slept in together while our kids had to tidy their own rooms), a pancake breakfast on the back porch, morning devotions and rowdy camp songs, a scavenger hunt, crafts, swimming and diving contests, an obstacle course, hobo dinners cooked over the fire, flag making, s’mores, a moonlight movie on the lawn (this has become a much-loved slide show of past camp summers), skits, midnight spy games for the teenagers, and a camp store with items bought by fake money earned by doing extra chores in the weeks before camp.

We named our camp after the indians who lived in our area, and we even had t-shirts made. One year we had lunch pails with the camp logo and kids’ names on them, and this year we’re planning for water bottles to be part of the “camp package”. We figure with all the money we save not sending our kids to “real” camp, we can afford to do something a little extra special each year.

Summer camp will be a fond memory for our kids, too, but we hope that it gives them the good memories without the compromise in character that we parents experienced in our childhoods. Even the best of Christian camps (I’d consider my childhood camp to be squarely in that category) leaves lots of unsupervised time for kids to learn some things that perhaps we as parents don’t think they’re ready to tackle.

And yes, I know that kids are saved as a result of good Christian camps run by godly people. I don’t doubt that one bit. We’re still not willing to put our young kids in the position of playing missionary to kids coming out of homes where there may even be antagonism toward the God of the Bible. If you are wishing to give your kids a camp experience without the unwholesomeness that inevitably accompanies the best aspects of Christian camping, we’d be the first to say, “Go for it!” Grab another family or two and plan a summer camp adventure for your kids this year. Our camp motto is, after all, “Where you don’t need strangers to fill your cabin!”

Check out my article on page 22 of the funky flipbook edition of Heart of the Matter Magazine.

Kendra Fletcher is the homeschooling mother of eight, ages 16 down to one year. She has never known what it means to homeschool without the presence of preschoolers, and loves to encourage other moms beginning their homeschool journeys with little ones underfoot. Her website and blog can be found at www.preschoolersandpeace.com