Life Skills at Camp!

Jed at Camp Weequahic 1971

Last week, 14 members of the Meadowbrook Leadership Team attended the American Camp Association Tri-State Camp Conference in Atlantic City.  It is a great opportunity for our staff to share and earn with thousands of other Camp professionals.

In the spirit of sharing, here is a blog post from another Camp...this one from my Alma Mater, Camp Weequahic.

At Meadowbrook, we are very focused on teaching important life skills to our Campers.  This blog post is a great perspective on some of those life skills that we teach at Meadowbrook, skills like Resilience  Sportsmanship, Teamwork, and Self-Esteem.  Check it out...and let us know what you think!

 Learning to Lose at Camp

ACA Tri-State Conference

At Meadowbrook, we talk a lot about our Leadership Team as an important difference in what we offer our camp families. It is a large, mature, experienced, committed group of professionals that help make the Meadowbrook experience extraordinary for our Campers!

This important difference was on display last week as 12 (yes 12) members of the Meadowbrook Leadership Team attended the American Camp Association Tri-State Conference in Atlantic City. With 12 attendees, we were probably the largest group from any camp in NJ, and among the largest at the conference overall.

Why do we make the commitment and investment to bring so many people? At Meadowbrook, we are dedicated to continuous improvement and lifelong learning for everyone....our Campers...our General Staff...and our Leadership Team! Sure, we can tell everyone what Jay Frankel said, but it is not that same as hearing it first hand and participating in a role play with his actors. We can explain the latest team building game from Jim Cain, but it's not the same as playing it. We can talk about what other camps are doing in the areas of staff hiring, training, facility improvement, program development, but it is not the same as actively participating in the discussion and learning from the best and brightest in the camp industry.

On the exhibit floor, we are always looking for the newest improvements, special event ideas, craft suppliers, etc. Sure, 6 eyes are good....12 are better...24 incredible. We purchased several new items for our Activity Tent, replaced a few more tents, and are adding a new over-surface to the hallway and bathrooms where our Tiny Toon Campers change.

We visited with our suppliers for background checks, t-shirts, insurance, database management, food service and others...We confirmed plans with our entertainers for Reality TV Week, Carnival, X-treme Water Day, and our Giant Board Game...We checked in with camp vendors where we were their first or early clients in the camp industry such as our revolutionary Snap Court Surfaces, bubble machine, and iDance.

Overall, we learned, shared, bonded and grew to help make this Summer at Meadowbrook another Extraordinary Summer for all of our Camp Families!

Activity Tent

We are finishing up our annual trip to the American Camp Association Tri-State Camp Conference (more on the conference later). One of our goals for this year’s conference was to improve what we offer under the Activity Tent at Meadowbrook.

Mission Accomplished! First of all, we purchased a brand new product: Poly Pong. Poly Pong is a 4-sided Ping-Pong Table. It is a combination of Table Tennis (aka Ping Pong) and 4-square! There are 20 different ways to play and it should be Really Neat!

We are also buying new Baggo sets. We found Baggo at this conference a few years ago. It is a bit like horseshoes with bean bags. It is a very popular game and we will replace our Baggo sets with brand new ones!

We are also considering another new item: Lasso Golf. We really like the game and the concept. We just need to make sure that we area comfortable we can play it safely under the Activity Tent.

We will continue to offer 4-Square, Giant Connect-4, Giant Jenga and Knock Hockey. And naturally, we are always on the lookout for more ideas. Let me know if you have any!

- Jed

Back to Camp

Today we return to camp after almost a week out of the office. We visited another Day Camp in NJ (thanks Andrew) to share ideas and then spent several days at the Tri-State Camp Conference in Atlantic City buying, learning, and sharing.

What do we do now with 98 days to camp? Today is catching up on lots of phone calls, emails, and enrollments from last week. Also a few tours for prospective families. New stuff? Our challenge course gets its annual inspection this week. We already know we are replacing a few elements on our low course. So today we put in a new pole for an anchor. We also need to finalize some tri-state purchases: more foam for our bubble machine...some funky new "sand"...and getting to work on everything we need to buy for our new salad bar (more about that another day), just to name a few.

Please give us your feedback on the expansion our presence in social media. This entry will appear in a few different places. Let us know what works best for you as we try and "figure it all out!"

ACA Conference

We just returned from the American Camp Association (ACA) tri-state conference in Atlantic City. Meadowbrook had 8 members of our Leadership Team present, among the most of any camp!

What did we do? Attended sessions...visited with suppliers...shared ideas with other camps...shopped for new items to make Meadowbrook even better!! Now that we have our blog, we can share with you like never before...stay tuned!!