| Frost Valley YMCA

07/28/2015

This morning adventure awoke and gathered in the village for an activity we call morning ritual. This is where the village will meet and discuss the days core value, each day we pick one of Frost Valleys 8 core vales which are Caring, Community, Respect, Responsibility, Honesty, Inclusiveness, Diversity, and Stewardship. Today’s core value was Honesty, here each camper opened up and shared one fact about themselves with the group and after that they made their way to breakfast.

After breakfast we dove into a hard skills rotation. This is where the campers shuffle from station to station. At each station they learn a new outdoor skill: how to work a backpacking stove, how to read the signs of a coming storm and what to do if one comes, what a good camp site should look like, how to minimize our impact on the forests and our natural environment. Before we head into the woods we want to make sure we know everything we can and get on the same page about safety.

After the skills rotation the campers broke out into smaller groups to take part in some camp activities that they wanted. We offered candle making, soccer, and water color painting at the lake. For water color painting campers learn different tips and techniques to create their painting. Today the subject was the very beautiful Lake Cole and to create the image they mixed paint with water from the lake giving them a painting made with the subject in which they painted. A very cool concept for the campers.

Before dinner the whole village got together and jumped into the lake for the swim challenge. Today we had perfect weather to enjoy a dip in the lake! Tonight the campers are making their way to a flashlight tag game we call French Rev. After they will head back to the village to wash up and do devo with their tents. A great day of learning and running around!

Happy Trails.

James

Assistant Adventure Director

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russell Frisch

Russell started his time at Frost Valley as a camper in Forest Village in 2005 and has been here ever since. He was a camper in Adventure Village, Farm Camp, and on Teen Adventure Trips before becoming an AiT and eventually a staff member in Adventure Village. He worked as the Village Coordinator for Adventure Village before working as the Assistant Adventure Director for two summers. He is very excited to be working as Adventure Director for the first time this year.