Welcome greetings to all from Laura Glendening, Director of Summer Programs.
Each year I look forward to seeing all our returning campers, meeting our new camp families, and connecting with our summer staff both returning and new.
Our six-week summer season feels to me like I imagine the flocks of cormorants feel on the day they fly steadily past Cushing Island to return to Casco Bay – so glad to be at their summer place and to be with their summer community!
At FSP Camp we strive to create a vibrant, caring, creative, and sometimes silly summer community. Like cormorants together drying their wings – silly, clever, connected – we gather to share our days and this place for this part of summertime.
Chickadee, Fox & Crow Camps
Our three camp groups, Chickadee, Fox, and Crow focus on fostering a connection to the land, building a community in which everyone belongs, and engaging in the creative arts and play.
Connection to the Land
At camp, we observe the world around us. We wonder at the tall trees, the visits from chattering crows, and the early morning beauty of a dew-covered grass spider’s web. We notice that the forest was here long before us – we work and play as gently as we can as we share this place. During circle gatherings, campers share the things that they notice about the world around them. The structure of our camp days allows us to slow down, watch, and reflect on this place that is our home for the camp week.
Building Community
From our morning circle where campers share something about their time out of camp to the closing circle each afternoon when campers reflect on their camp day, our counselors work to bring the camp group together. They model and foster thoughtful listening, kind actions, and inclusion.
Counselors lead whole group games, carefully watching to see that all campers are engaged, and they encourage activities that grow from free play to become activities that the whole camp is engaged in. Hardships and misunderstandings are approached with kindness and honesty. These things happen and counselors work to help campers talk out challenges and repair harm to each other and the group.
Camps celebrate the week together with parades, plays, and adventures to places in the forest or by the stream that the camp group has grown attached to. At our closing circle, Chickadee, Fox, and Crow campers come together to sit in a few moments of silence, share reflections, and sing camp songs.
Creative Arts and Play
The arts hold a special place during summer vacation. Our camps work to provide campers with extended opportunities to creatively play with materials and ideas.
The arts bring action and the heart together and at camp we see this everywhere: drawing, fort building, running, singing, sewing, creating and performing plays, and more! In the wide range of ways art is created at camp, campers work to problem solve, collaborate, trust each other and oneself, notice emotions, and notice the world around us.
Do you have a question about summer camp?
Please email Laura Glendening, Director of FSP’s Summer Programs at laura@friendsschoolportland.org.