9 minute read
Camp Is Cool
Camp Is Cool 7 Things Teens Can Learn This Summer
Summer camp is often a place to send elementaryage kids so they aren’t sitting around the house bored. But camp is an important opportunity for teens, too. Here’s what they might experience. By Kerrie McLoughlin
1. Giving back. Community service camps offer a great chance for your teen to make a difference while also acquiring skills that will carry them through their lives. In these programs, kids get to spend their days helping others, which just feels good to everyone involved. Maybe your teen will pack food for the homeless, teach kids how to read, or clean up a playground. They could even learn how to paint a house, care for a yard of an elderly person, or plan and build a home for someone who is in need. 2. Making new friends. Adding new friends to one’s life is enriching at any age. Some teens attend the same camps every summer and see the same friends every year while other kids are attending camps for the first time and need to learn to connect with new people. Whatever the situation, creating and maintaining friendships requires kids to develop social skills. 3. Learning new things. Whether your teens attend a camp to learn more about horses, a specific sport like soccer, or a skill like a foreign language, they have an entire day, week, or longer to focus on that one activity and really immerse themselves in it. Who knows? A summer interest could turn into a lifelong passion that inspires a vocation or avocation down the road. 4. Working as a team. Your child will be meeting kids of different ages and backgrounds. Learning how to get along and work as a team is a huge life skill that will be reinforced at camp. Some camps even have kids do teamand trust-building activities to help kids get to know each other. 5. Staying active. Kids need to unplug from the various screens that demand their attention—TVs, video game players, smartphones, etc.—and
engage their bodies. Camps, especially sports-oriented camps, give them a chance to do just that.
6. Living without you. Let’s face it: As our kids get older they start to grow away from us. They are simply preparing to head out on their own, and going away to camp cultivates their emerging sense of independence. The daily structure of camp helps kids to become responsible while relationships with camp staff teach them to respect and learn from adults who aren’t their parents.
7. Appreciating everything.
When kids spend time away from their parents, they come home with a new appreciation of what it takes to be in a family. Your teens will probably also appreciate funny things like a full pantry that’s open all day, their comfy beds, and privacy. ¶
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Parenting in a Pandemic Welcome to Bizzaro World
By Janeen Lewis
If a clairvoyant had told me six weeks ago that I’d be indefinitely quarantined at home with my family, I would have told her she was looney tunes and asked for my money back. And yet here I am like the rest of the world, reeling open-mouthed at a huge curveball thrown by a virus. I keep hearing the words new normal, but here are some things that make it feel like Bizzaro World to me.
An obsession with toilet paper.
Really? Who knew that during a pandemic that revolves around, no, not dysentery, that toilet paper would be all the rage? I never thought people would be madly bidding for Charmin on eBay, or that I would finally have access to that thing I have always needed: an online toilet paper calculator (again, six short weeks ago, who’d have thunk?). I merely punch in the number of times my family goes Number One and Number Two (this makes for an interesting and fun household survey) and the amount of squares used, and voila!, it calculates that our seven rolls will last nine days, and that’s if we don’t eat tacos. We’re doomed.
Nail and spa places are not
“essential” businesses? I haven’t had my upper lip waxed in weeks, and my 13-year-old son, Andrew, is starting to grow facial hair, so we are both sprouting mustaches simultaneously.
I’ve caught up on ALL my
sleep. And I mean all of it: Weekly college all-nighters. The endless nights spent feeding my newborns. The too many years I binge-streamed Grey’s Anatomy (and I thought I’d never get that decade back). The only times I’ve interrupted this new 14-hours-of-sleepa-night schedule have been those early morning wakeups to, quite unsuccessfully I might add, beat the run on the restocked toilet paper.
Mom’s done a 360 on screen
time. In true Freaky Friday/Twilight Zone fashion, I’ve become the Rosanne Barr of electronics. Before, I’d have set limits on my kids’ screen time. Now, to keep myself sane, I find myself repeating, “Just watch your tablet!”
It’s all about “real world” math
lessons. How’s this for a crisis homeschooling assignment: Have the kids tally all the times they hear the words new normal or unprecedented. Then they can make graphs and charts depicting their results. That will keep them busy. And if that doesn’t work, there are always word problems that revolve around toilet paper consumption.
Social distancing actually brings people closer together.
In all seriousness, I’d have thought we’d get lonely stuck at home. And yet, I see friends and families coming up with creative ways to connect in spirit (and Skype). Flattening the curve together is inspiring; we will get through it.
Still, I wish we had a few more rolls of toilet paper while we’re doing it. ¶
The Amazing Technicolor “Blanket”
Divers know that underneath the surface of the sea is a vibrant world teeming with life. One of the inhabitants of that marine universe is the blanket octopus. Night divers in the Lembeh Straight, off the coast of Indonesia, captured the creature unfurling its colorful cape-like web in a video that North Sulawesi’s NAD Lembeh Resort shared with the site The Kid Should See This. See the stunning footage, as well as other clips of a blanket octopus near Romblon Island in the Philippines, at thekidshouldseethis.com/post/ the-blanket-octopus. ¶
Baby Eagles Steal the Spotlight
To parents, no one is cuter than their own children. But the fluffy, recently hatched bald eagles recorded by the southwest Florida Eagle Cam may come in second. With close-up shots of mama bird’s feedings, the footage may even inspire the birth of an amateur ornithologist or two. See the chicks in all their adorableness at tinyurl.com/y84bjuh4. ¶
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Take Shelter in Poetry
Iwill arise and go now and go to my grandparents’ house in the green rolling hills,/Where my childhood will forever come back to me. So begins local eighth grader Mari Sow’s poem “Green Rolling Hills,” which Sonoma County Poetry Laureate Emerita Iris Jamahl Dunkle uses to start Shelter in Poetry, a series of online poetry lessons for kids. In her first video, which is produced in English with Spanish subtitles, Dunkle teaches children how poets use the sound of words to create beauty. Look for it and more lessons at norcalpublicmedia.org/poetry-classes-at-homefor-students-and-families. ¶
Keep Kids Safe Online
With COVID-19, kids are spending more time than ever on the computer, some of it unsupervised. Sexual predators may be taking advantage of this situation. According to a Fox News opinion piece by Beth A. Williams, “reports of potential exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [NCMEC] more than doubled from 983,734 in March 2019 to 2,027,520 in March 2020.” Predators rely on apps and platforms that feature user anonymity and end-to-end encryption, and they contact children through direct messaging, video chats, and file uploads. For help keeping children safe online, see the Department of Justice’s guidelines at justice.gov/coronavirus/keeping-children-safe-online. Report online sexual exploitation at report.cybertip.org or call NCMEC at 800-843-5678. ¶
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