We have so many great memories from Session 2. Here are a few highlights as recorded by our awesome media team (AKA the “GACarazzi”):
There’s always something going on at camp, whether that’s a cabin theme day, a backpacking trip or a visit to Shaver Island! Check out the outpost schedule below to see where each cabin is going this session.
We’re so excited to welcome our Session 3 campers to camp today! This session we have campers from Spain and from six states outside of California (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, and Washington)!
Of these campers…
85 are 1st time campers at GAC
172 are returning campers
39 are 3-year campers
31 are 5-year campers
and 3 10-year campers!
What are we eating this week? Check out the Session 3 Menu!
GAC is excited to be joining camps across the country in celebrating Camp Kindness Day! For our summer theme, Better Together, we’ve been talking about ways we can be better together. After a year of being separated from loved ones and friends, it’s more important than ever to remember to be kind to one another and find ways in which we are better together.
On July 20, the camp community will participate in Camp Kindness Day – an event highlighting the practice of intentional kindness that happens every day at American camps. This is an opportunity to raise awareness of the the great work that camps are doing to teach kindness in engaging, simple, repeatable, and high impact ways that live on in the daily lives of campers and staff members when they return home.
Focusing on our youth and young adults, Camp Kindness Day will help showcase the commitment of the camp community to fostering the core values of kindness, compassion, generosity and care, and integrating those values more fully into every aspect of our society. These values are already part of the fabric of the camp experience. We share the mission for our youth to be nurtured, taught, supported, and inspired to grow into our new generation of kind, compassionate, socially-minded, community-oriented citizens.
Camp Kindness Day will allow camps to incorporate into their July 20 programming fun theme-based activities and cooperative games, cool projects, and memorable moments which will celebrate the value and impact of kindness.
Today at Morning Assembly, Sunshine shared the friendship tip of asking good questions. She shared about the research of Arthur Aron and how he found that two strangers felt closely connected after a 45 minute conversation covering 36 questions.
Resources/Related Posts
36 Questions to Get Closer to Someone You Love (Sunshine Parenting)
Teaching Campers the Friendship Skill of Asking Questions
Research Finds Children Learn Social Skills At Camp
Why Kids Make Their Closest Friends at Camp
Session 1 has already come and gone and we miss everyone so much already! We hope you enjoy these memories and we cannot wait to see you next year!
We’re so excited to welcome our Session 2 campers to camp today! This session we have campers here from all over the United States, and even Spain and Mexico! Of these campers…
73 are 1st time campers at GAC
199 are returning campers
36 are 3-year campers
35 are 5-year campers
and 7 are 10-year campers!
We are so excited for the next two weeks that will be spent hiking, singing songs, waterskiing, campfires and so much more! Make sure to keep up with everything going on at camp through our News section!
What are we eating this week? Check out the week’s menu!
There’s always something going on at camp, whether that’s a cabin theme day, a backpacking trip or a visit to Shaver Island! Check out the outpost schedule below to see where each cabin is going this session.
Gold Arrow campers who have completed the 9th or 10th grade take part in a special celebration at the end of their camp session. These campers and their counselor gather around a magical campfire created just for them when the rest of camp is settling into their sleeping bags. This is a milestone and tradition that campers both look forward to and have feelings of trepidation about because it signals the beginning of something new and the end of their time as a carefree camper. Each camper receives a paddle inscribed with their name and a special word selected by their counselor. Notches on the wood represent the years spent at GAC. For our graduating campers, this paddle is more than wood and inscriptions, it’s the hope of what lies ahead after the many lessons learned as a camper.
Congrats to our 3 and 5 year campers! Since the early days of camp, founder Manny Vezie began a tradition – campers and staff who attend Gold Arrow Camp for five summers are presented with a blanket to commemorate this achievement. Every summer at camp 5-year campers are wrapped in their blankets at Appreciation Campfire along with 3-year campers who receive their banner on the final night of their session.
