Archive for the 'Other' Category

If you have a smooth, grassy hill, you have the perfect setting for ice blocking.

This is something I learned from our friends to the south…way south. In California where they are lacking snow, they still like sliding down hills. They just do it a little different.

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A very good investment for a camp is to make flags. I would suggest making them 1.5 inches, using colored webbing. How many flags will you need to make? Use 6 colors with 1 color equal to about 1/4 the number of campers. If your camp has 100-120 campers, then you would want to start off with 40 of each of the 6 colors. Each flag should be about 10 to 12 inches long.
If you want move your game to the next level, you can also make belts for the flags. To do this you will need:
1. Blue and white marine rope, or any small, easy-to-tie rope cut into pieces long enough to tie around a person’s waist. (Remember: campers come in all sizes.)
2. Tabs made from neutral colored webbing, the same width as your flags. Finished size of tabs will be about 2 inches.
3. 1 inch velcro squares

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Sometimes at a camp fire you get campers and staff that want to play in the fire. This can get very dangerous nothing is done. A good solution that I have found to fix this is to assign someone at the fire as a fire marshal for the night. This position means that out of the staff and the campers the fire marshal is the only one that can put wood on the fire. It is a very easy line to see and follow, so if a camper starts to play with the fire ask them if they are the fire marshal and when they say “no”, ask them why they are playing with the fire. Mix up the people that are the fire marshals so that different staff get a chance.

A good way of making teams that does not show any favoritism and surprises the campers is to get every camper to take their left (or right) shoe off. After that get them to throw it into the middle or off to the side (Note: all to the same place). Make a pile of all the shoes and then just start throwing them into smaller piles making the teams. After all the shoes are thrown, tell the campers to go to their shoes and that is their team.

One thing that I have found very useful at camp is the usage of a headlamp. I had a Petzl Zoom and loved it. You could focus the light for your current situation. If you were going through the woods you could have it tightly focused for a long shot of light and if you were building a fire for that night you could have a wide focus so that a lot was lit up close. I would not recommend getting a solely LED headlamp, they are great for doing things up close but LED’s do not throw their light very far or are as intense. I am looking into upgrading to the Petzl Myo 3. This is a headlamp that has both the focusable halogen and the LED’s. It is like the best of both worlds. Once I get it I will give an update on how I like it.