Virtual Camp: Building Connections and Bringing the Camp Spirit

Virtual CampCamper Experience & Program Design

Mar 23

Written By Sarah Kurtz McKinnon

4 Corners (Of Your Own Home)

Or

Ultimate Show and Tell (Household Edition)

Or

A Social Distancing Scavenger Hunt

Or

Something to Try As We’re All Trying to Figure Out How Best To Exist In This Temporary New World Together

BY BEN CLAWSON

Camp Director, Lindley G. Cook 4H Camp

A note from Kurtz: Ben Clawson, one of our amazing TSCS members, has written this step-by-step plan for an interactive virtual camp activity! Thank you, Ben! Photo above by Roderick Cooney.

The benefits of this game? Kids get to talk. They get to listen. They get to meet each other, or get to know each other better. They get to run around their house. They get to newly explore with fresh eyes the place they’ll be spending a lot of time for the immediate future. They get to interact – that crucial moment of combustion that makes everything else “campy” possible.

What You’ll Need:

- A Video conference platform of some type. (Zoom, etc…)

- A staff member who deep down wishes they were a game show host.

- 5-20ish campers/kids. (I’d probably recommend a sign-up so you know your numbers, and a permission form for parents since kids will be interacting with staff/each other. And so parents know what in the world is going on when the kids start running around their house grabbing stuff.)

- No other things.

As you can tell from the multiple drafts of titles above, this game is, of course, only a matter of days old. I’ve gotten to try this out just once so far, with New Jersey 4-H’s new 4-H from Home program. There were around a dozen participants who I didn’t know since they weren’t summer camp campers, and who didn’t know each other either. It went bizarrely well. Here’s the outline I used:

I. Greetings from Summer Camp!

a. Camp is all about being together, in the same place, getting to know each other by playing some goofy games. Today, is all about being together, in different places, getting to know each other by playing some goofy games.

b. This brand new to me! Brand new to you. Brand new to the planet. Thanks for being brave and joining in on the world premiere of this game.

II. Game Structure and Rules

a. The host will announce an item category. Participants then have ONE MINUTE to locate an item in their house that best matches the category. It’s now show and tell time!

b. The host will call on participants to tell the story of the item and why they choose it. (Follow up questions are key! Ask for more details, more opinions, more stories.)

c. Award points!* (More on this below.)

d. Repeat over and over again until the fun runs out! (My session was an hour. Could’ve gone way longer probably.)

e. Rules: No items your parents wouldn’t want you to touch! Nothing you’ll break. Nothing too fragile. Nothing dangerous. If your parents are around, tell them what’s going. Ask permission if it seems appropriate. You are timed! I encourage you move to quickly through your house. But please don’t run and hurt yourself. If you’re going to hurt yourself during a game, a game of online virtual show and tell is NOT the game to hurt yourself during.

III. Participant Selection

a. If you’ve got too many kids playing to have every kid participate in every category, you can narrow down the field with “If your name starts with the letters A-E, if you’re 12 years old, if the last digit of your phone # is an odd number”, etc.

IV. The Item Categories

a. Something in your house that’s blue.

b. The strangest thing that’s red.

c. The oldest thing you can find.

d. Something that you don’t entirely know what it’s for.

e. The newest item in your house.

f. The most interesting thing that’s brown.

g. An item in your house that is used less than it should be.

h. Something small but useful.

i. Something that looks heavier than it is.

j. Something with sentimental value

k. Something with no sentimental value

l. Your favorite thing.

m. The other million things like this or better you can think up in no time.

*I didn’t end up doing anything with points other than shouting “Awesome! That’s worth triple points!” occasionally. I think you could have folks vote on their favorite in each category via the private message chat on Zoom, or break them into four teams and keep score as well, if you felt that would liven things up.

Kids got to share stories about two trophies (winners of a basketball championship and a fire prevention poster competition. Before you ask – yes, we also got to see the award winning poster.) We saw a fossil, a piece of petrified wood, a baby photo, and a carving of the Taj Mahal. We discovered a few favorite books, the importance of a single Connect-Four piece, and a handbag that held no particular significance at all. We got to meet one stuffed moose, one stuffed unicorn, one stuffed dog, and two real dogs. And a very special cat blanket. We heard a song on a piano, heard the tale behind a collection of framed seeds, heard why there was still a Christmas tree in the corner of a living room, heard rare stories usually kept away on shelves and in closets, heard a lot of jokes, and heard a lot of subsequent laughter.

Surprisingly it turned into one of those classic summer camp things: we started as a bunch of strangers trying to explain how the mute button worked on Zoom, and 45 minutes later everybody knew some stuff about each other, everybody has shared some stuff about themselves, and everybody was in a pretty great mood signing off with “hope to see you again soon.”

And, from one Camp professional to another: after a week of worrying about budgets, and revenue, and cancelations, and policies, and health departments, and international travel regulations and a ton of other things entirely out of my realm of control, running this little game was by far the most useful I’ve felt all week. It was also the most fun I had had.

(I’m looking forward to playing with some of our summer camp kids soon, and throwing in some more specific “Camp Categories.” Also planning on some similar sequel games – an “I Spy…In Your House…” and a “Stay At Home Trivia”.)

Good luck out there! (Or in there, more accurately.)