ACA Home Forums Count Down 2010!!

haha, yeah I know what you mean! This year I'm going to try really hard to make it so that doesn't happen. I'm sure it did in past years though. I suppose it's a good thing that I will be there for the week before staff training so only returners and a few newbies will see me and hopefully I can chill my crazy exuberant-ness at least to a non-"oh God, Giggles is coming" level.

awesome! I like it!

So now I'm overseeing the art studio's summer camp in Chicago and directing a day camp with at risk kids as well. Camp starts in a month too and I start working on Monday. But it's going to be awesome!

whoa! that's crazy awesome, Campwoman! Busy busy!

So I start packing up for the summer tomorrow and then moving in for the summer on Wednesday. Still a little over a month until the summer staff gets in, can't wait. Until then, OE will have to hold me over.

DTP - this Outdoor Education sort of thing - I know you said it was like camp, but not - could you elaborate? (I would've made that a PM but figured others would be interested as well)

hehehehe... we could shorten it to H-Rex ;P

Yay! I've finished work an it's only 18 days before I arrive at camp!

Outdoor Education is camp except a little more educational. Most of the groups that come in are school groups, usually 5th or 6th grade classes but on occasion, the class may be older or younger. Some groups are very small, probably will bring one class with around like 30 or so kids and then there's other schools who'll bring huge groups that are like 100 kids or so.

Depending on the size of the group, that's usually how long they stay. For example, if its just a small group of like 30 kids or so, most likely they'll only come for 2 days, 1 night since its easier for them to get through everything which such a small amount of kids and plus its cheaper. If its a huge group, like between 50-100 kids or so, they usually come for 3 days, 2 nights. We have a ton of different classes that we offer, some very educational, some with a lot of team building, and then some that are just fun and depending on what the school wants, those are the activities the school gets to do. So pretty much, every schedule is different group to group.

Some of the classes we offer are; bog hike, wilderness survival, animal survival, aquatic adventure, archeological, archery, canoeing, rock climbing, initiatives, challenge course, high ropes course, horseback riding. The classes are usually about 60-90mins long, somewhere along those lines depending on the schedule for the group. Those are usually done in the morning and afternoon and then we use the evenings for fun camp activities like campfires, square dances, mock rocks, or camp games like dutch auction, predator prey, ect. We also do night hikes but so far we've yet to do any night hikes with any of the Spring groups, only the Fall groups...probably because of how late it gets dark now.

Its still a lot of work because we're working from about 7:30am until about 10-10:30pm but its easier because we're not sleeping in the cabins with the kids and we don't have to get them ready for bed and stuff like we do during the summers. Each group brings chaperones that stay in the cabins with the kids. The chaperones are also there throughout the day for extra assistance or whatever if we ever need it, which is nice to have.

We also get church groups or other different type of groups that come in on the weekends and depending on what activities they want to do, the schedule is a little more laid back for the camp staff. The staff is much smaller during OE too, we only have 5 full time OE staff members this Spring but if we get a really big group like we did last week, we'll probably have 3-4 more people come in to work the group. The most we'll ever have working a group is probably 10 at the max, so that's a lot different from summer.

Sometimes the schedule can get very tricky, we'll have a big school group in from Monday to Wednesday afternoon and then have another big school group come in Wednesday morning and stay to Friday and then have weekend group(s) come in Friday evening. That's a lot of work, especially when during the middle of the week you have one group getting ready to leave and then you have another group arriving, its crazy! But its also a lot of fun after you get past the tiring part of it. This upcoming week we have a big school group coming in from Wednesday to Friday and then we'll have three different groups in over the weekend....fun!

Working our weekend groups at my camp is an optional and extra thing. Fall we didn't really have much need for extra staff to host weekend groups but I don't know about spring. We have some weekend things that are volunteer as well (mom and dad youth overnights, etc).

My camp's OE groups usually come up as a whole grade so there's 60-90 kids ina group. Ours too are mostly 5th and 6th grade. Sometimes we have groups up for a day field trip.

We have groups Monday to wednesday afternoon and wednesday morning to Friday afternoon too. For the most part it really works perfectly well. The first group is out of the cabins by breakfast and are in the dining hall eating lunch while the new group moves into the cabins and eats a sack lunch they brought from home in the meadow.Then the old group leaves and it's all normal.

We work from 7:30 til about 9:30 but also don't have kids to care for at night. During the day we teach activities such as forest, wildlife, wetlands ecology, outdoor living skills, orienteering, canoeing, climbing wall, team building actvities, and Life and Death in the Forest, and possibly something else. On the first night there are night hikes and on the second night, a campfire.

Last fall we had 6 staff, plus our director. It varies depending on the season and how many she manages to hire, but that's a noraml amount of staff. Yeah, sometiems we have big groups and need to call in people from previous seasons for the group. That's how I get to work one session this spring! In fact, last fall we accidentally double booked groups so we had to call in like 4 more people for that and one to be our KA (he volunteered himself for single-handedly being our KA for like 150 people though we helped when we could). Every session one of us is the KA and we rotate through it.

oh, forgot to say 35 and 48 days!!!!!!!!!!!! Getting close to a month!!!!! Friday is 1 month until OE session!!! Wednesday is 1 month until I move back home!

34 days...

- Teenster

33

so you guys are going to hate me for the number of days( or lack thereof) that i have left before camp starts for the summer for me. I have a whopping 13 days until i move in, 14 days until training starts

Well, I'm packing my stuff right now currently....I move in either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning...haven't decided when I want to drive up yet.

<-- jealous

Totally! The hardest part of not being able to go to camp is watching people count down to when they leave!

and yet you still frequent the Countdown thread...!!! I know how it is though- as far as not being able to stop yourself, not the camp thing yet though I imagine the day will come.

Well I do have 68 days until: http://www.caledonia2010.org.uk/

and fuision is 2 weeks after I get home!

ahh, true. That'll be fun!

Oh my... there are a lot of unnecessary 'e's on that page lol

sounds like fun!

21 days! one week til vacationing in Mexico for a week, one week in Mexico, and then one week until I leave on a jetplane for camp! (shoutout to aerosmith right there..)

14 days!!!

wow, Indigo- 2 weeks! Lucky duck!

34 and 47! woot woot!

15 days!

I know! Less really, because I'll be working at the barn the day before, and then I plan to just stay overnight that night.

32 days! But I've got to start packing soon because I'm moving into my new house soon and I won't have a dresser in my room as of next weekend, so it's easier to just start packing into my camp bins.