Sunday Snippet: The Power of Seven

Well, we are back from our end of the season hiatus. Thank you for giving us some time to relax, recuperate, and regenerate after an exciting and wonderful summer at WeHaKee Camp for Girls! We thought we would start by examining what our children and youth really need for a good & successful life and how WeHaKee is the perfect place to meet those needs – the power of seven!

The number seven shows up frequently in our lives and our culture. It is a prime number… each week has seven days… it’s a number gamblers seem to appreciate… there are supposedly seven wonders of the world… and so it goes. A recent article we reviewed  – Seven Experiences Children Need – suggests that there are seven experiences critical to the growth of our children. The author, Michael Unger, Ph.D., suggests these seven experiences help build the pillars of resiliency, a major developmental asset consistently displayed in grounded, successful, and happy children, youth, and adults. And camp is the ideal setting for children to effectively and actively engage in these experiences:

• 1. New Relationships – Camp provides endless opportunities to build new relationships with peers and trusted adults (beyond their parents).   WeHaKee is highly intentional in role modeling strong, positive relationships as well as providing many opportunities for campers to practice & hone their relationship-building skills 
  2. A Powerful Identity – This helps to build self-confidence even when one is not the best or most skilled in a particular area. WeHaKee creates a supportive and nurturing environment for children and youth to examine, explore, and experiment with their identity in healthy ways to help each camper discover and feel good about who they really are.
  3. Feeling In Control of Their Lives – Camps help children sense this consistently as they independently navigate the camp community. At WeHaKee we embrace providing each camper with opportunities to experience meaningful involvement, to feel they have a say in what is happening.
  4. Being Treated Fairly – Each child comes to camp free of the identity thrust upon them in school, which allows them to be free of the restraints of this ‘baggage’. WeHaKee works diligently to create an inclusive environment that allows each child to feel comfortable trying new things without judgment or ridicule and to emerge from this with a sense of feeling valued and appreciated.
  5. What They Need to Develop Physically – Camp is a wonderful place for physical activity in a myriad of ways; fresh air, walking from activity to activity, plenty of physical activity choices, good food choices (and good role models eating those choices), structured activity as well as lots of opportunities for free play. When children arrive at WeHaKee they may fear to disengage from the electronic elements of their lives, but they soon realize the power of activity and shed those restraints freely and quickly.
  6. Feeling Like They Belong – Camp, through its many rituals provides a commonality among the campers nearly instantaneously. This brings each individual participant together on common ground. WeHaKee strives to provide each child with a sense of belonging immediately when they arrive, helping each girl embrace the camp community and their peers and subsequently diminishing the fear of exclusion or homesickness.
  7. A Better Sense of Their Culture – By bringing individuals together from a variety of groups and communities, camps provide children exposure to others different from them. As they soon learn how much they have in common, they then begin to appreciate the differences that make them unique. WeHaKee brings girls together from throughout the nation and around the world and creates a community where girls create new and lifelong friendships.

These seven experiences are woven throughout WeHaKee and it’s many opportunities. Campers have chances to repeatedly experience these elements in all that they do at camp, building on their resiliency and independence. It’s what we do at WeHaKee Camp for Girls and we do it well!

Speaking of the power of seven! Did you know there are only seven days left for our best early-bird discounts for WeHaKee Summer 2013? You can register right now by clicking HERE! For more information, please visit our website or email us at [email protected].

Have a great week everyone!