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Family Camp 2009

This summer Kennolyn will be offering two separate Family Camp sessions - one at the beginning of summer (May 1-3) and one at the end (Labor Day Weekend Sept. 4-7)

What is Family Camp?

The simple answer is that Family Camp is exactly what the title implies! The truth is, there's so much more to it than that.

At Family Camp you will experience fun activities, great food, good friends, and quality time together as a family. At Kennolyn you can do many different activities including (but not limited to)

Ropes Courses
Mountain Biking
Horseback Riding
Pottery
Basketball
Tennis
Golf
Dance
Guitar
Riflery
Fencing
Archery
and much much more!

In addition, you can either choose to stay in our recently upgraded log cabins, which offer 2 double size beds per room (some have an additional single bed in a side room) and a bathroom with a shower, or you can save $200 (for May weekend) and $300 (for September weekend) on your family total by staying in one of our more rustic wood cabins, which are furnished with bunk beds and share community bathrooms.

For many families with young children, Family Camp serves as an introduction to all that Kennolyn has to offer. It is a great way to enjoy a family vacation and prepare your children for a summer as a resident camper when they are old enough.

But don't just take our word for it! Teacher, writer, father of three boys and family camp veteran Gregory Keer wrote a great article about Family Camp for Parenthood.com. Here's an excerpt:

Aside from having all the play opportunities, family camp is a unique chance for parents and children to deepen their bonds. In an environment far from the hustle and responsibilities of home and work, families can focus on each other.

They can try new things together, such as waterskiing and archery. At the camp my family attends, we've gone on counselor-led parent-child overnights under the stars and giggled through campwide picnic games. Though I haven't gotten the guts to do it yet, lots of parents perform with their kids in a talent show as well.

With family camp, my wife and I love the idea that our children have a consistent place to anchor their summer memories, a setting that challenges them to grow independent in addition to having the times of their lives. We get to share in their fun as much as we can and also watch them go off on their own. And it doesn't hurt that I get to keep trying to conquer my own childhood failures at horseback riding and singing.

You can read the entire article at Parenthood.com

Finally, you can learn more about Kennolyn's upcoming Family Camp sessions at Kennolyn.com - but don't delay - space is limited!

ASK KENLYN

Today we begin a new feature here on our Blog called "Ask Kenlyn."

Kenlyn is a real camper whose name just happens to be so similar to ours! She will be entering her ninth summer at Kennolyn this year, and as a special treat to our readers and campers we have asked Kenlyn to answer questions, provide tips, and cover general camp information as part of a new regular feature!

This feature will be the best place for parents, campers, and anyone else to ask questions about summer camp - just submit your question in the comments section or email them to me at eric@kennolyn.com and I will forward them over to Kenlyn. So without further ado, here's Kenlyn!

Hi, my name is Kenlyn; I’m twelve years old and in sixth grade. This will be my 9th summer attending Kennolyn.

I started at family camp when I was only four years old. I love Kennolyn Camps! In my spare time I like to do track, soccer, and tennis. I also love to hang out with my friends and of course go to camp! My family and I first decided to go to Kennolyn when my mom saw an ad for it and said Wow! That camp’s name sounds almost like Kenlyn... we have to go! 

Turns out Kennolyn was a one-of-a-kind experience and we just had to go back.

If you are planning on coming to Kennolyn or any summer camp, here are a few important tips to remember when coming to camp:

For Campers

1)  Towels are incredibly important. Bring a few. We take showers frequently and we all have to swim. If you only have one or two towels, by the time you swim and take a shower, your towel is soaked!

2)  Terry cloth bathrobes are helpful. They absorb water instead of just dripping the water out. With a terry cloth bathrobe you can walk to and from the showers comfortably. (You can also bring both a terry cloth and a fuzzy one.)

3)  Bring a trunk instead of a suitcase.  Your trunk ends up being your closet. If you have a suitcase or a duffle bag as your closet, it will collapse and your stuff will be hard to find.

4)  Spray sunscreen is very helpful. Lathering on sunscreen from head to toe takes a really long time and you don’t have a lot of time between activities.

5)  It is really helpful to have a sturdy and somewhat large cosmetic bag so you can carry all of your belongings from the shower back to your cabin and vice versa. Of course, it’s also helpful for storing your cosmetics.
 
6)  Bring old/yucky clothes for overnight outpost camping. You will end up getting your clothes incredibly dirty. If you wear nice clothes to outpost, you’ll probably never be able to wear them again.

7)  Make sure to bring warm pajamas because the nights at Kennolyn are quite cold.

8)  For two week campers: When you go to the beach bring a different backpack than your regular one. This is because the one you bring to the beach will get all sandy. Then you have to use it and it gets all of your stuff sandy and maybe wet too.

For Parents

9)  Letters home are great. But its not that wonderful when all you say is “We miss you honey…come home soon….love mom and dad.” It feels better when you tell your child what’s happening at home.

10)  Make sure you leave money at the general store for your child so they can buy items they forgot to pack or lose. For example, if your son or daughter loses his/her toothbrush, he/she can buy a new one.

That's all for our first installment of Ask Kenlyn! We will be doing Ask Kenlyn posts periodically as an ongoing feature here on the blog, so be sure to leave your questions in the comment section or email them to eric@kennolyn.com.

Until next time: k-e-double-n-o-l-y-n spells Kennolyn!

Here's Woodrow!

When we last left Chris he was wandering aimlessly around Budapest, taking pictures of random buildings and nameless strangers...oh yeah...and diligently recruiting the best staff a summer camp could ask for!

After racking up about fifty billion frequent-flier miles, Chris is finally back behind his desk at Kennolyn. There's still a lot of work to do before camp starts, and Chris is working harder than ever to make sure this summer everything runs as smooth as silk.



Welcome back, Chris!

Farm-a-Mia

I mentioned Kennolyn's new vegetable garden in an earlier post, and was finally able to catch a photo of "Old MacMia" herself in front of her soon-to-be horticultural masterpiece.

The plan is to take periodic shots of Mia in front of her garden, and after the end of the growing season I will be able to put together a time-lapse animation of the growing vegetables behind her. Neat!

Now sing along with me!

Old MacMia had a farm,

e-i-e-i-o!

So far all she has is dirt

e-i-e-i-o...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Kennolyn has always been abundantly green, but today everyone is green!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from all of us at Kennolyn Camps!

Go Outside!

As if interaction with nature didn't offer enough obvious benefits, we can now look to a study published in the journal Psychological Science that has concluded that a walk in nature sharpens the mind, while a walk in the city does not have the same effect.

The study found in part that “...when the participants returned from the nature walk, they showed a 20 percent improvement (in the tests) but showed no improvement when they returned from the urban walks.”

The results are due to what is called the "Attention Restoration Theory," which splits human attention into two categories; "directed" and "involuntary."

You can read more about it and see a quick video at Sciencecentral.com...or you could just go outside and take a nice nature walk!

Where's Woodrow Episode III

The final leg of Chris' journey for Kennolyn took him to Budapest!

From Wikipedia:

Budapest is the capital city of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it serves as the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation center and is considered an important hub in Central Europe. In 2008, Budapest had 1,702,297 inhabitants, down from a mid-1980s peak of 2.1 million, with an official agglomeration of 2,451,418. The city covers an area of 525 square kilometres (202.7 sq mi) within the city limits. Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river Danube with the unification on 17 November 1873, of right-bank (west) Buda and Óbuda (Old Buda) together with Pest on the left (east) bank.

Here's a shot of Budapest at night!

Hurry back Chris! We're glad you had a great trip and were able to meet so many wonderful people, but Kennolyn can't survive without you much longer!

Where's Woodrow Part II

Welcome to our second installment of "Where's Woodrow?"

Today we find Chris in Prague!

Here's Chris with a random individual in front of...a building!

Unfortunately, Chris didn't say what he's standing in front of or who he's with for these Prague pictures. Maybe an astute reader can fill us in?

For this next picture Chris was able to tell me that it was taken during dinner, and that the music was very loud. Fascinating!

That's all from Prague.

Join us for our next installment of "Where's Woodrow?" wherein Chris roams the streets of Budapest and gets his picture taken with more unknown people in front of random buildings! Neat!

Wabbits Wabbits Wabbits!

Some of you may recall the bunnies that were born here at Kennolyn Camps a few months back. (Click HERE to see their baby pictures on Flickr.)

Well, the rabbits are growing up fast as rabbits tend to do!

Yesterday we went out to the barn in order to clean their cages and freshen up their shredded paper supply.

They just love fresh shredded paper in their cage!

As soon as it's changed they begin their burrowing.

Lucky prefers hay:

Where's Woodrow?

Our very own Resident Camp Program Director Extraordinaire Chris Woodrow is gallivanting across Europe right now in the never ending search for exceptional talent. We're expecting him to return with many excellent new individuals for our summer support staff, loads of great pictures and stories of his travels, and maybe a few souvenirs.

Here's a shot of Chris' plane landing in Russia. Brrr!

Here's Chris in front of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow:

Here he is in front of an unnamed building - also in Moscow:

And finally, here is Chris and an unnamed counterpart posing in front of "KGB Headquarters." We'll have to take Chris' word on that one, as we can't really see what they're posing in front of.

Their expressions do scream "KGB" though, don't they?

That's it for today's installment of "Where's Woodrow."

Tune in next time as Chris visits Prague!