Every year one of my favorite parts of the summer is seeing the connection our girls have with one another. There is always such a foundation of support and kindness that continues to strengthen week after week. Today we celebrated Camp Kindness Day, a day all about passing along kindness to one another and making a positive difference in your community. This morning we had three different stations set up under the trees for campers, including kindness letter writing, a kindness graffiti art wall, and painting hope rocks. We had all different types of construction paper, stickers to decorate, markers, and glitter out for campers to create their letters. Campers were encouraged to write one letter to a staff member at camp who they’re grateful for and another letter to a loved one at home. Campers sat back in the Adirondack chairs, with music playing in the background, and began writing letters as they looked out down the hill towards the lake.
After letter writing, they went down the hill towards art shops where there was a kindness graffiti wall. Our Seniors worked with Eric, our Fine Arts Department Head, to create this beautiful masterpiece with the quote, ‘In a world where you can be anything, be kind.’ As girls approached the wall, there were sticky notes ready for them to help answer the question, ‘What does kindness look like to you?’ As I went down to walk between each station, I was so impressed with all the sticky notes that began to cover the entire wall, with things like, ‘kindness is going out of your way to make someone smile’ or ‘kindness is realizing that it’s not hard to make someone’s day by doing one small act for them.’ These campers care so much for one another, and all those around them, and their ability to fill the entire wall so quickly was incredible.
Their last station of the day was decorating rocks with hopeful, optimistic, and kind words or messages. Girls picked out which color paint pens to use and began creating their rock designs. Girls had the opportunity to take their rock with them or hide their rock around camp. In mid-August, once Tripp Lake campers all head home, we will have Camp Dragonfly, a one-day retreat to bring together grieving children and teens grieving the loss of a loved one, at Tripp Lake Camp. These rocks will be hiding around camp, ready for Camp Dragonfly campers to discover and stumble upon, bringing messages of hope and support from Tripp Lake Campers to them. Last but not least, we had kindness nomination boxes set up at camp, where campers would write a brief message about how a fellow camper has been incredibly kind to them. During mealtimes throughout the day, our 1AB ladies would get up in front of camp and pull multiple nominations out of the box, read these messages aloud, and then that person would come up to spin the Wheel of Kindness, a wheel full of fun prizes.
The day ended with our Sub’s fantastic show of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Every single camper did such a fantastic job performing Charlie Bucket’s quest to find his golden ticket! Our campers showed their love for one another during Camp Kindness and their support for one another up on stage! It was such a beautiful, uplifting, and fun day at camp.
Kind Regards,
Leslie
