Welcome to next installment of our New Camper Series. These blogs will focus on New Campers and help prepare everyone for this summer. This blog will focus on Activity sign up!
When we say “Sign Up” we mean the campers get to choose the 5 activities they want to do for next 3 or 4 activity days. This process begins on arrival day here at Camp Foley. Campers will sit in their cabin groups and be given a sign up sheet, with a list of options available for that camper.
Campers will circle 6 activities they would like to do. Each camper signs up for at least one water activity and has the choice to take one creative class like Crafts, Video Creativity, or photography. Once you fill out your sign up sheet, it gets sent to the office where our admin layout the schedule for every one for the next few days of camp. Your sign up gets returned to you the next morning and your activity sign up begins!
Now those are the basics but what makes a great sign up? The answer is simple, it’s your choice! We want our campers to have choice in everything they get to do at Foley and sign up is the first big choice a camper will make for themselves as the session begins. This means the campers are in charge choosing exactly how they spend their time here at Foley. If you want to spend all day on the lake, go for it! If you want to lots of high intensity activities all day like waterskiing and paintball, awesome! Maybe you want a chill activity to balance out all the running around you’ll do in your other activities and sign up for crafts, great idea! 
A huge advantage of our Sign-up system is the length of time for each sign up period. Campers will get to do the specific activities they choose for 3 or 4 days and then have a chance to do sign up again. This means that campers are not stuck doing the same 5 activities for the 3 weeks, unless they want to. Every time we do sign up, campers can choose to pick different activities or pick the same activities they know love. This encourages campers to try things they may have never done before, because you are not locked into that activity for more than 4 days. If a camper has never been canoeing, they can sign up for it and learn abut Canoeing for 4 days, and it will be up to them if they want to sign up for Canoeing again. Maybe the camper loved it so much and 
signs up for Canoeing for the entire session or maybe the camper wants to try something else and signs up for Windsurfing instead. Both scenarios are great and means the camper is gaining grit, trying new things, and learning new skills.
You can check out all of our camp activities here on our website. If you have some time, it might be fun to sit down with your camper and think about what they want to try signing up for during their first Activity Sign Up.