Practice For Camp

At International Gymnastics Camp campers will tidy their cabins each day – in fact, they earn “Cabin of the Week” contest points for doing so! Have your children practice at home helping pick up, sweeping, etc. Campers should also know how to straighten out sheets — or at least a sleeping bag — so the bed looks neat in the morning, do their hair for practice in the morning, put clothes away at the end of the day, wash up at night, and hang up their towels after use (Don’t worry, our counselors are there to help too)!

At International Gymnastics Camp campers staying multiple weeks often want to do laundry on Saturday. Have them help you with a load at home, and have them learn if anything they are bringing to camp needs to be sorted and washed separately. We have standard coin-operated commercial laundry washing machines and dryers, with easy push-button choices (E.g., Whites, Colors, Permanent Press, Delicate). Do not send your gymnast with quarters for laundry – we will debit their canteen account and provide the quarters here. The IGC washing machines and dryers are coin operated. Campers can purchase laundry detergent in the canteen through their canteen accounts.

IGC campers use their canteen account to buy gymnastics camp souvenirs, gymnastics apparel and accessories, and extra snacks during recreation time. However, if you want their money to last over the entire week without a letter home asking for more, have them practice! There are many great children’s budgeting resources available, but here are two tips that parents have passed along that work well:

• Have a parent-child grocery store date! Give your child a very simple grocery shopping list, and an amount of cash that doesn’t quite cover it all. Have them figure out the limit of the budget (E.g. they can afford one expensive item off the list, or several less expensive ones) and have them decide which they want.
• Give older campers several weeks’ allowance at once, and help them budget it out over the time period.

Taking part in even the smallest decisions will increase perceptions of control.

Young people should be told, “Almost everyone misses something about home when they are away. Homesickness is normal. It means there are lots of things about home you love. And the good news is that there are lots of things you can think and do to help make things better if homesickness bothers you.”

Such as a weekend at a friend’s or relative’s house. Ideally, these 2 or 3 days do not include telephone calls but do include opportunities for writing a letter or postcard home.

Ensuring that children know how to write letters increases the likelihood that they will maintain some contact with home.

Web sites, orientation booklets, and current students, alumni, or staff members are excellent resources. They increase familiarity and, thereby, reduce anxiety.

Both kinds of connections ease the adjustment to a novel environment.

Parents should share their own separation anxiety with other parents, not with their children.

Show children the time between today and the day of the separation. Highlight which days or weeks the child will be away, so he or she can see that it is a discrete period, not an eternity.