Celebrations at Camp

Celebrations at Camp

To keep the campers entertained, camp organised multiple celebratory event days every so often to allow the kids to break away from their typical daily routine.. Any excuse to get the face paint on! In this blog post, be prepared for an unnecessary amount of pictures of what we got up to on these days!

**Disclaimer** all camper faces in photos will be blurred for privacy.

The first celebration event day at camp was the 4th of July/Independence Day Parade. On this day, selected staff were assigned to different parts of the camp and given a typical American theme to dress up as (Cheer Leaders, Statue of Liberty, Cowboys and Indians and so on...) and asked to create a routine as part of the parade route. I was part of the Native American Indians. We painted our faces with tribal prints and i made some 'feather' head pieces for us all to wear. One counsellor even made her own Pocahontas style dress.

As our camp counsellors were very international, we had an International Day. We got into groups of our home countries and made a routine to something stereotypical for that country, for example.. the 5 of us from Scotland recreated a scene from Braveheart and then danced to 500 Miles. This gave campers the chance to see the culture of many different countries through Irish dancing, Hungarian music, English football chants and so on... 

Another one of my favourite event days was Carnival Day. I was far too excited for this day all summer! It felt like such an American tradition and I was excited to try all different foods I'd heard of, like corn dogs and snow cones. The event included a slip and slide from one side of camp to the other, a dunk tank for "Dunk the Director", a photo booth, a cotton candy and pop corn stand, pool games, music blasted from speaker and role on carnival day was face painter.. it was so much fun and the memories will stay with me forever!

Towards the end of camp we had Spirit Day: A celebration of the 65 years that Lee Mar has been running. There was an awards ceremony for staff who had met milestones as well as performances from each group of campers. Whats even more exciting is that Camp Leaders were there to film us! For the finally of the show, a counsellor from each country stood on stage holding their flag as two counsellors sang. A group of counsellors then stood on stage one by one with a sign thanking the campers for a specific reason, with most of the posters beginning with 'Because of you I...'. It was a very emotional day.

Each week there were also special entertainment evenings after dinner including Camp Sing, where we would sing traditional camp songs, Counsellor Entertainment where groups of counsellors would get on stage and sing, dance or act to make the campers laugh, and Friday night dances practise for the annual Senior Fling as well as a night or the campers to choose what they wanted to do after dinner, like art club.

 

Finally, I have so many amazing memories from Senior Fling. We spent the entire morning transforming the local fire station function room into a party room and the entire afternoon getting the campers ready for the dance. They each brought a special outfit to wear to the end. I helped style the girls hair, paint their nails and put on some makeup to make them feel even more beautiful. By the time Senior Fling came around the campers were confident with each other and even asked each other to be their prom dates.