Camp Kupugani Blog
Helping Your Child Through Meditation
At our girls-only and boys-only multicultural summer camp, we’re all about empowering children by giving them tools to better celebrate and appreciate themselves and their fellow campers. Check out this link for a simple how-to guide from sociologist Christine Carter to teach your kids a simple “loving-kindness” meditation to help them produce more than just momentary good feelings. Research those that meditation can help with greater life satisfaction and fend off bad feelings, leading to an increased sense of purpose, tighter social bonds, and better health outcomes. Even a single meditation […]
Parents Without Camp Experience
The Idea of Camp Seems Crazy to Me Imagining a camp experience for my child, I’m thinking I’m sending my child off into the woods—and I’ve seen The Shining—scary—and there are TV reports every day and night about all of the bad things that can happen to my child when out of my sight even just on the playground much less hundreds of miles away off in the woods where there might be lions and tigers and bears—oh my! And I’m supposed to just send my child off for a […]
25 Ways to Avoid Yelling
As a camp director of our multicultural summer camp for girls-only and boys-only, parents often compliment me on my “way” with children, as we serve as substitute summer parents for their precious cargo. In the summers, we get the benefit of having amazing staff who seem to have boundless energy and patience. In the non-summer months, as I get older, sometimes my own boundless energy and patience isn’t quite as boundless as it used to be. Although I give myself credit for being a pretty good and mindful parent most […]
Empowerment Via Language
I had a prospective parent contact me earlier today, asking about the potential comfort level for her 12 year old daughter. They live in Costa Rica and her daughter speaks only Spanish with rudimentary English abilities. The daughter is excited to get fully immersed in a supportive, English-only environment to maximize her English-speaking. Because our summer camp program has a multicultural, empowerment focus, I felt comfortable relating to the mom that we have had campers of a variety of initial English-language comfort. A cogent example was when we had two […]
Making Mindful Food Choices
As we try to be more mindful of what we are feeding our families (and campers), increasing our families’ intake of fruits, veggies and whole grains should be easy right? We’re starting to get more readily available information regarding genetically modified (GM) foods—from shows such as Dr. Oz, to other media outlets. So, are GM foods safe or harmful? GM foods and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been around since the early 1990s. While regulatory authorities have approved GM food that is on the market, some people are concerned that […]
Accreditation by American Camp Association
The American Camp Association (ACA) is the largest accrediting body of camp programs in the country. Although many good camp programs are not ACA-accredited, one way folks can feel confident that their loved ones are in a safe and nurturing camp environment is to confirm the camp’s ACA accreditation. To achieve accreditation, camps must comply with many mandatory standards applicable to their specific programs. Accreditation visitors review up to 300 standards — regarding essential health, safety, and program quality issues important to a camp’s overall operation. There is an important […]
Why Mindful Parenting Works
At our multicultural camp program, we focus a lot on intentionality in our program and our interactions. We also have a lot of intentional parents who see our camp as a great extension for the growth and development they seek for their children. Here’s a good piece about mindful parenting, and how mindfulness can help reduce stress in your household or classroom (or camp). Click here for a two-minute video containing an overview of a technique used by social psychologist Christine Carter that she uses to bring more mindful awareness to […]
Environmental Mindfulness – The Story of Stuff
On my drive towards a recent camp event, I was listening to a little radio blurb about how our world population is increasing. It reminded me that, as camp people—especially at a program that tries to be intentional about empowering our campers in all aspects of their growth—we have a vested interest in protecting our Earth’s limited resources, which are in jeopardy of being forever ruined during our lifetimes. When you have twenty minutes or so, take the time to watch this video (“The Story of Stuff”) if you haven’t yet seen […]
The Importance of Free Play
I recently attended a regional camp conference where the closing keynote speaker discussed how parents these days feel compelled to keep their children “safe” at home, and inadvertently (or purposefully) limiting their chances to play outside with other children. It reminded me of how fortunate our son is to grow up in our rural camp home, where he can go outside at any time and engage in free play, limited only by the bounds of his imagination or when hunger calls him to come in for a snack, or when […]
Tips So You Can Avoid Having to Nag Your Children
For you intentional parents out there looking to further spur your child’s empowerment even while they’re not at our girls-camp or boys-camp, here’s a good piece from sociologist Christine Carter regarding setting yourself up as a parent to have to nag less! It’s a podcast, so for you visual/reading types, the takeaway is: (1) Setting up habits and routines is a good way to eliminate the need to nag, since children can just fall into the pattern of what’s expected of them at certain times (2) If you do need […]
Friends Positively Influence Self Esteem
Being intentional about empowerment at our girls-only and boys-only multicultural summer camps, we’ve always recognized the importance of connecting with others, and the value of developing community. A recent study underscores the value of having a best friend in whom to confide; feelings of self-worth and morale are directly strengthened by the presence of a best friend. Read up more on how friends help us to negate negativity here.
Camps Help Make Children Resilient
In a recent article published in the American Camp Association’s Camp Magazine, Dr. Michael Ungar, a professor of social work at Dalhousie University and scientific director of the Resilience Research Centre (go Canada!), discussed how camps, like good schools and loving families, immunize children against adversity by giving them manageable amounts of stress and the supports they need to learn how to cope effectively. Debunking the resilience myth that resilient individuals are those who overcome adversity because of special individual qualities, Dr. Ungar recognizes that studies from fields ranging from child development to […]