Category: Current News

Finding Great Resources

Posted on by Pam Cobb

As a camp in Maine, we feel the change of seasons pretty much on the date the season changes. The fall is upon us at camp and we are missing your children and our campers at sleepaway camp here at Runoia. We know you are busy, busy with school, homework, after school commitments, sports, travel teams, social events, fund raising events, school governance and, um, WORK!

Here are a couple of resources we found that might help you out:

Feeling like you want to inspire your daughter? Consider a call to action:

Hardy Girls Healthy Women have a bunch of links to awesome social action sites with ideas about perception of girls in the media and girls making their voices heard, how to be a stand up girl and help others and much, much more: www.hghw.org

Consider bringing Dunk Your Kicks – fighting pediatric cancer –  to your community. They came to summer camp at Runoia this summer (and we rocked it): http://maxcurefoundation.org/dunk.html

Is your daughter growing and wondering what’s going on? Cozy up on the couch, share this great site with her and let her know you want to help her understand her changing body: http://www.girlology.com/index.php

Is your daughter wondering (are you wondering) how she can be helpful? Set up a lunch station in your fridge or pantry – great ideas here: http://www.applegate.com/community/posts/10-tips-to-make-packing-lunch-a-breeze

Are you struggling with your daughter every day? Do you fight and come head when getting ready for school, carrying out tasks, making social commitments? Check out our friend and peer in education and camp, Ross Greene and his collaborative problem solving ideas: http://www.livesinthebalance.org/

Do you have suggestions for resources for other camp parents about simple struggles like: what she can wear, how much time online she can spend, her data usage bill? Let us know your thoughts through comments here or email us children@runoia.com – we’d love to hear your ideas.

Happy school days. It’s awful quiet at camp and we miss you.

We hope this helps you get connected and solves some problems. We miss you too much and can’t wait to see you in 2014! We’ll be posting every month now – so be on the look out for our blog!

The Runoia Team

Unstructured Free Play and Allowing Mistakes

Posted on by Pam Cobb

As many of us as parents have discovered, it helps our children to grow and develop when they make a few mistakes along the way. Guess what our #1, top of the list priority is at camp? You guessed it – your daughter’s physical and emotional safety, followed by learning and growing and having fun and making lifelong friends and building a treasure chest of memories. Safey is #1. With that in mind, we think about how girls play around camp on their own, tether ball, hanging out in the lookout, rock hopping through the ferns and junipers, walking with a friend on the nature path, stopping to build a fairy house, pick up soccer, grabbing a friend to play tennis, ping pong or badminton, reading on the porch of a cabin, playing house in various corners of camp, and much more more. All of this happens in those little nooks and crannies of time built into our schedule. There are adults around – within earshot and within sight, but girls are playing together and working things out. When I read this article about growing leaders and mistakes we make, I thought of our unstructured free time. A great part of camp.

Play              Laugh          Camp

Playing at camp with the goats

 

International Women’s Day

Posted on by Pam Cobb

There are people in your life who influence your life, add to your life, perhaps even change the course of your life. I would like to acknowledge three women who were significant in my career. When I became a small business owner of a girls’ summer camp, I was enthusiastic and had a passion for being successful but in both cases it was because of the belief of others in me.

I have a lot to be thankful to my mom, Betty Cobb. There’s the obvious. There’s the whole camp director role model thing. But surprising to most, it was the way she affected people and how they grew from her leadership that inspired me the most. My mom was a tough woman, all about do the right thing and sacrifice and for the better good, etc. She had high morals, was often unyielding and worked very, very hard. She loved her family, her students and her campers and counselors. There was a tiny moment when she loved French cooking, too. I enjoyed seeing her explore that because I didn’t see my mom explore a lot that wasn’t innately part of her. She was an excellent cook and I think French cooking was a reach that gave her a new lease on life. One winter she when I was a girl, she went to France and went to cooking school. I digress. Anyway, my mom inspired me to be a hard working, do it yourself person. I wouldn’t be the camp owner/director I am today without my mom. Here’s a picture of her with my dad when she was a young camp owner and director.

The other two women come in tandem. They were both camp directors. Twenty five years ago they approached me together at a camp conference. Like cheerleaders, they rallied and pepped and told me ecstatically how they were happy I was listening to the calling of my family and becoming a fourth generation Cobb family camp owner and director. At the time, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do it. They made me want to do it. There was such glee and infusion of energy in their combined assault on me in the conference lobby of the Center of New Hampshire in Manchester, that I believed in myself that day. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I can remember the clothes I was wearing, the way the light filled the hall, the sound of the conference dimming out behind them as they chimed in unison and gushed over me in excitement. It was a moment in time that has stood still for me. It’s a framed like a picture in my mind. These two camp women, June Gray (with Pat Smith on left) from Camp Wawenock and Jean McMullan from Alford Lake Camp were catalysts for who I am today.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I’d like to thank these three women in my life for helping me believe in myself and carving out the quarter century of my life that has been the center piece of my adult career. I haven’t even started on the hundreds of young women and children and parents I have met on account of my life in camping. That I’ll have to save for another blog.

Happy International Women’s Day 2013.

Runoia Connections Across the World

Posted on by Pam Cobb

We’ve been talking about Six Degrees of Camp Runoia – that expression came from a Kevin Bacon reference but that’s not important. The gist is every person you know or you meet is only 6 connections away from Camp Runoia. After Alex ran into Emily Levine in the airport last week and I talked with someone who knows the past owner of high end fine bedding and linens business- who is an alumnae of Runoia, we all seem so connected.

Last week one of our alumnae campers’ mom (that’s only one degree of separation, btw!), sent me a message about her new documentary on PBS, MAKERS. Makers is an amazing documentary about women who made the women’s movement in America. It’s even more than that as a bright, powerful, emotional piece production. If you missed it, you can stream it: www.pbs.org/makers.

Today I noticed, in recognition of March being National Women’s Month, they are posting an incredible woman every day. Check it out by clicking here.

What a cool and amazing opportunity to read about one woman every day. I hope to work on a list of camp alumnae and their incredible accomplishments soon. Off the top of my head they include women in major film production, financiers, officers, deans of universities, teachers, attorneys, veterinarians, business owners, social workers, psychiatrists, athletes, doctors, accountants and more. Each girl has the chance to grow up and be whatever she wants to be. Aren’t we lucky women in the 1970s made such an impact on our opportunities.

What Kind of Makers will these Girls Grow up to be?

Dr. Seuss Week and Poetry Month

Posted on by Pam Cobb
Celebrating reading with Dr. Seuss week. Any chance we get at Runoia.

We’re thrilled to let everyone know how much we celebrating reading at Runoia. Each summer we pick a great book or two for our book club. We are taking suggestions for this summer. Can you think of great children’s books you think we should read? With a morning cheer about reading, a word of the day is announced and off we go thinking with new vocabulary.

March is Poetry Month. Celebrate by submitting your poems to Camp Runoia for poetry month and we’ll post your poem online! Get inspired by clicking the Poetry Foundation here.

 

Why Should Your Child Ride Horses?

Posted on by Pam Cobb

From our Director of Riding at Camp Runoia: Jennifer Dresdow, who discovered this piece about riding by Rick Naband wanted to share as she feels it pertains to our girls riding horses at overnight camp in Maine

Why Should Your Child Ride Horses?

Riding becomes a life long passion for some. This sport impacts a child’s physical, mental and emotional well-being. How fortunate the child who can have the privilege of cantering around a large, living animal!

Horseback riding is physically demanding from raising up the saddle to the withers and then doing the “two-point” in the ring. It improves coordination and balance. Few sports make demands, bilaterally, on the body. Horse back riding is one of the sports that does.

Emotionally, riding can build character. It makes a child be and feel more responsible. They are accountable for this huge 1000 pound breathing creature. They learn empathy for the friend who has just fallen off, or the one who missed the course at the show. They mentor younger kids around the barn and that builds self confidence. They exchange and interact with adults and this only serves to increase their social skills.They are challenged to take risks. They meet new people and travel to new places.

Should they elect to compete at a show, they learn to be a humble winner or a gracious loser. They learn to handle disappointment or celebrate achieving a goal after committing themselves to working very hard all year round.

They are lifting, riding, feeding, falling, eating, cleaning, mucking, traveling, getting up early, organizing themselves… different than soccer, baseball, track or field hockey

So don’t be afraid parents to spend a few bucks on riding lessons for your kids.. chances are you’ll have to spend on an activity anyway… horses can teach your child life skills they will never forget, and that is priceless!!”

Camp and Technology – how Ironic!

Posted on by Pam Cobb

Let’s face it. We are plugged in. We search for directions online, we scan barcodes and QR codes to get more information about a product or a place, we can answer our phones or make a call nearly anywhere on earth and we update our websites to be current and fresh and available. Words like SEO, organic searches, blogging and new content are part of our everyday language.  We “Google” things, forward links and share video images and phone pictures by text. We compare prices as we are shopping. And, Camp Runoia has its own App!

At camp, during our summer season, we are virtually unplugged. Can you imagine we have our Camp Runoia App and yet we still go to this timeless summer place where we walk, run, play, swim, hike, bike, ride, zip, sing, shoot, act, laugh, paddle, sail, weave, kick, hit, return, knit, build, drop, light, dive, paint, whittle, whistle, shout, climb, leap, dance all without a single touch screen or phone app!!

There’s something beautiful about simple. We still do simple at camp. One of our campers recently wrote to say how much she is looking forward to getting back to camp this summer where she can just be with her friends rather than “Facebook” or “post” them.  The women from 1907 would hardly believe how technology is part of our every day lives. When they came to camp, it was a three day horse back ride into Augusta to get supplies and come back. Camp lasted for 11-12 weeks and girls arrived by train in the Belgrade Depot where the horse and buggy picked them up and loaded their camp trunks and off they went into the wilderness for 3 months!

Our girls still have a chance to unplug and enjoy the call of  the loon, the sound of the wind in the pines, the waves lapping against the shoreline. They spend earnest time together in laughter and in tears, loving each other and making up after real live arguing. Talking behind someone’s back comes out in the open to be dealt with by all parties.  Exclusive behavior gets morphed into inclusive acceptance of differences. Camp is the real thing – real people being together learning unplugged life long skills and making a lifetime of unplugged memories.

Join the irony – go to iTunes and upload the Camp Runoia and have some fun peeking in on our real camp as it happens in 2013!

New Skills

Posted on by Pam Cobb

This week I learned something new! Something I thought I would be hopeless at which turned out remarkably well!  I can now build LEGOS!! Yep I know you are all laughing and thinking everyone can do that but not me!  My kids never really had Legos before we just had blocks but this Christmas we got 5 sets of hard core Legos that build a specific project.  Little did I know that one box can contain over 1000 pieces!  Many of you know that while I can organize an entire camp filled with many people pretty easily the thought of having to do a crafty type project usually gives me hives and rarely gets good results, and no I have never made a basket!

I surprised myself on many fronts I was successful (OK let’s ignore the fact that it is designed for 5-12 year olds!) I truly had fun and was even building long after the kids had gone to bed, my kids saw me doing something they knew was hard for me and I honestly cannot wait for the weekend to build some more!

The whole process reminded me of the amazing transformation camp has on our girls, every day they go out of their comfort zone, try new things, amaze themselves with things they never thought they could do and best of all they have FUN!

Find something new and challenging to do to keep yourself busy through the dark winter days it will be summer before we know it.

Alex the Lego master

 

Trimming The Tree

Posted on by Pam Cobb

As many of you know I grew up in England where the holiday traditions are a little different.  In my childhood home our Christmas tree always magically appeared overnight.  My mother decorated it while we were in bed; it was trimmed to perfection with matching glass balls, tinsel and fancy colored lights with even the star on top coordinating and perfectly aligned.  I loved the tree of my childhood and my first years of living in Maine I missed it terribly.  Even with the joy of tromping through the woods to pick and cut the perfect Maine balsam fir it didn’t feel quite right.

Now as my own family has grown and I have embraced the traditions around me my favorite part of the holiday season is our tree. As we trim it together with mismatched decorations, white and sometimes blue lights and a random assortment of homemade treasures that remind us of past years, we laugh, reminisce and share stories about the meaning each ornament has. From the cute baby sized handprint reindeer, the occasionally tacky souvenir from faraway places (think Santa in swim shorts riding a turtle from Hawaii!) to the glitter pine cones Uncle Frank made one year everything has sentimental meaning.  As we individually pull things from the storage boxes the kids love to see who can reach the highest and even though we have a one ornament per branch rule our tree is a mismatch of color, shape and content.  From the bells that hang around the bottom to catch any sneaky elves who may want to climb up the tree, to the handmade angel given to us by a dear friend we truly cherish each and every ornament.

Our tree is a poignant, annual reminder of all we have to be thankful for and the love we share in our home. Oh and in case you were wondering and wanted to compare ‘our tree is the biggest, most beautiful tree in the whole, wide world’

I hope that however you celebrate the Holidays you have special family traditions that allow you to spend quality time with the ones you love the most.

From our home to yours we send much love for a Happy Holiday season. Alex