Creating a Program Schedule

The director is responsible to create a daily schedule that can be printed before camp starts and distributed to all participants at camp during registration. It is easier to adjust a schedule from a previous year than creating a whole new document. The Family Camp Circle can provide you with an editable file from a previous year. The program director is responsible to print the schedule and to bring the printed copies to camp. Print enough copies for inclusion in the registration folders and for posting on or near the doors of all main buildings (Dining Hall, Rec Hall, all education rooms and the lodges).

Assigning Meeting Spaces for the Different Education Groups

If you have participants in every possible education age group, you will have Twinkles, Stars, Moons, Suns, Comets, Supernovas, Quasars, and Adults. If the number of Twinkles is large, they will need their own meeting place. The size of the groups should be considered when assigning the meeting place/lecture room. The available meeting places, roughly in order of how many people the can accommodate, are

• Recreation Hall
• Unit 1 Lodge
• Nature Lodge
• Shared Cabin 1 (can accommodate presentations)
• Shared Cabin 2 (not ideal for presentation, but works for small kids)
• Infirmary (not ideal for presentation, but works for small kids)

If you have participants for all age groups mentioned earlier, you will have to deal with the shortage of meeting places. In the last few years we have put up the large tent at the beginning of Week 1 and taken it down at the end of Week 2. This created one extra meeting place. If you know that you need the tent, make sure that it will be there and that you have a crew who knows how to put it up or take it down.

In 2017 the presenter of one group decided to use benches in the forest between the office and the Dining Hall as a meeting place. Had the weather been bad, they would have used a unit lodge during that time. Fortunately that wasn’t necessary. We generally don’t use the unit lodges as meeting places (except for Unit 1) because they don’t have electricity and are quite dark. The Dining Hall is usually used for Adult Education. If you have more than one Adult Education group, you will have to be creative to find a space for all of the groups.

Education Times

The education sessions for Suns and older starts at 9:00am. The Moons and Stars start at 9:30am, to give their parents a bit more time to get them ready. The Twinkles schedule is very flexible and can be decided on a case by case situation.

Meal Times

Breakfast always starts after the singing and announcements at 8am, and lunch starts after the singing and announcements at noon. The time for dinner, however, is not always the same. On the first day of a full week, it is usually at 5pm, so that the Opening Night can start at 6:30pm. The Opening Night consists of Orientation, followed by group meetings. Both are very important to get the camp started off right, and there should be enough time allotted for this. On the day the Family Fun Night (usually in the evening of the first full day) and the day the Dodge ball Tournament takes place (some years it’s on the second full day, other years on the third full day), dinner should also start at 5pm, so that most of the Dodge ball games can take place while there is still enough daylight. On the remaining days, dinner starts after the singing and announcements at 6pm.

Sports, Crafts, Hikes, Adventure Race

Afternoon activities have to be coordinated so that groups are spread out between crafts and sports. Only one large group or two small ones should be at the crafts cabin at the same time, for example. Also, if the hikes involve leaving the camp by car, the number of groups leaving for hikes on the same day will be limited by the amount of vehicles that are available to transport them. We usually schedule the hikes on two different days. The Adventure Race is best conducted on two different days as well, maybe on the first day for the older kids and on the second day for the younger kids.

Sample Schedule

Here is a sample schedule from a previous year (please note that it does not include a Twinkle group, as there were not enough of them to form their own group): File:Week 2 Schedule 2017.pdf

Distribution

• The schedule should be sent to the craft directors and to the cook before camp starts. The cook needs to be reminded of the days when dinner should be served early.
• The schedule needs to be printed by the program director and the printed copies need to be brought to camp. The copies meant to be included in the registration packets need to be handed to the registrar a the time registration opens at the latest. Earlier is better.
• The schedule should be included in the registration packets each family gets when they arrive at camp.

* The schedule should also be posted on several buildings throughout camp (director needs to organize this).