Shabbat-O-Gram: Week 7 2024
Dear families and friends,
‘All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…’ When Lilah and Ellis strum the first chords of that song tonight, the sobs will be loud and it will be the last song of the summer. (It’s ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ for all you non-camp people!) We will have heard campers share thoughts on the session, sang together, watched slideshows, honored milestone years (we share camp gifts for years 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 years) and celebrated staff with 11+ years (we’ve got a lot of Kingswood history on our team!). We will have honored campers who live our four Kingswood values of courage, responsibility, spirit, and community by calling them up to sign our Values Boards, the highest honor given to campers , and we will have announced the CITs or staff chosen by our community as Log Winners – the highest honor given to staff and CITs with 3+ years at camp, also for living and modeling our Kingswood core values.
Closing Campfire will be coming to an end, and the tears will be flowing. It’s funny how that works; you send your kids to us teary because they’re leaving home, and now we send them back to you, teary because they’re leaving camp. It should give you comfort that you’ve chosen a summer home for your kids that they don’t want to leave!
This week it was easy to see why. We started the week with Campchella Saturday night, and it definitely lived up to the hype! Staff bands performed and lip synced, and camper acts from the Rock Band elective wowed us with how good they could sound after only a week or two of practice. I hope you’ve checked out some of the photos online! The camper acts were recorded and will be shared out after camp. They were unbelievable, and when the Chalutzim rock band finished the first song of their set, they were so good that we could have been at the real Coachella!
As the last staff band was about to end, the lights flashed, a firework went off, and all of a sudden we were at Hogwarts, watching the sorting hat ceremony! Harry Potter Color War broke on stage, and as Voldemort zip-lined away, camp was divided into the four houses to compete for Harry Potter to join their house. The next two days were filled with Harry Potter-themed action, with the Quidditch tournaments one of my favorite Color War programs of all time. Staff ‘golden snitches’ darted around while campers on broomsticks tried to catch them, adding excitement to the typical Upper Fields Color War events. Human Chess was also a highlight, and the pieces moved around the boards just like in the movie.
My favorite Color War event since I was a camper myself is the relay that goes all across camp and ends with the Rope Burn, where the CIT captains have to build a fire and be the first to burn a rope in front of the whole camp. The race is an intense event and the whole team is involved along the way, with every camper having a station. The race ends at the Canoe Dock, where the four fire pits are already set up with a rope tied across. As the teams finish the Water Brigade station at the Waterfront, they race over to the canoe dock, the whole team required to be present and accounted for before the captains can start collecting wood. Many of the CITs have been waiting their whole lives for the Rope Burn, and as the campers watched the CITs work together to build their fire, you could see the younger campers watch the CITs with adoration and admiration, watching their role models showing what it means to be all in, working together to achieve a goal, putting everything they have into building that fire without any of them standing back and watching. While the red team ended the relay and all of Color War victorious, every team was winning at some point along the way, and it was a close call until the very end!
After Color War ended Monday night, a regular week at camp resumed, and campers finished out their third cycle of electives. It was a week of lasts – the final climb up to the zip line, their last turn on the wake board, and the last meal cooked on the fire at Outdoor Cooking. A ‘regular’ week still has a ton of action, and Tuesday and Wednesday nights Olim took to our woods for their overnights, sleeping in tents and getting comfortable for the adventures they’ll take beyond the Kingswood woods once they’re rising 6th graders in Tsofim. Chalutzim had their final trip, spending the day at Diana’s Baths, exploring one of our favorite trails and waterfalls in New Hampshire close by. Thursday night we were treated to three showings of our campers’ incredible creativity and talents – The Art Show, Peter Pan, and the Theater Showcase, a show added this session especially for Bogrim and Chalutzim campers. You can see highlights of all three online, and the full show of Peter Pan and the Showcase will be shared on Kingswood’s channel on Youtube. That’s also where campers can watch all the weekly highlight videos from the summer and the slideshows we’ll be sharing at Closing Campfire tonight!
Last night we welcomed Shabbat, moving to the Old Rec for our first rainy Friday night of the summer. (The sun’s shining brightly today, so our concerns about Hurricane Debby taking our last sunny day from us weren’t necessary!) Olim and Chalutzim are leading this Shabbat together, and last night they did a beautiful job setting the stage with their chosen theme of ‘M&Ms’ – Mentoring and Memory – a perfect theme for our last week at camp. We heard from our oldest and youngest campers in their creative expressions, talking about what being or having a mentor means to them. Olim campers talked about looking up to their Chalutzim buddies and how inspiring they are, and Chalutzim campers talked about how empowering it is to be seen as a role model, and we heard about the importance of having trusted ‘advisors’ in life, whether you’re 8 or 88, to guide us and inspire us to be our best. It was moving to see them leading their parts of Shabbat together, and it’s easy to see how awesome the future will be when the CITs are staff!
We say that what makes the Kingswood community so special is that we are one big family, and if you could be at Closing Campfire tonight, you would see that in real time. Young Olim campers will be falling asleep on their Chalutzim buddies. Tsofim campers will be sitting with their CITs, many of whom were their Chalutzim buddies last summer. Bogrim campers are mixed together, friend groups blended that were distinct a few weeks ago, girls and boys genuinely friends, at an age when that’s so important beyond camp. Campers across units sharing jokes, as if they’re siblings. Counselors and campers will be finishing each other’s stories, showing a depth of relationship that only comes from living in the same room for a few weeks. It’s hard to describe the value of these relationships, but I hope you’ll see what I mean when your kids come home from camp. I’ll admit, they may be a little sassier than when they left, but please cut them some slack. Feeling more confident and independent can do that, and that confidence will help them feel great as they head into the school year. (My mom used to tell me I was too ‘fresh’ to be around for a week after camp every summer. It’s not just your camper. :))
The summer is coming to a close, and it’s time to say goodbye for now. Campers will board the buses in the morning and head home, and the electric energy here at Kingswood will live on in memories and stories until the buses pull back into camp next June. By now everyone should have received their transportation confirmation email, and you can find all the details about buses and times here in the Family Handbook.
Mini-Campers will arrive Wednesday, and if any campers have younger siblings wanting to give camp a try, we have a couple of spaces open! (We welcome rising 1st – 5th graders, whether they’re new to camp or not!) After Alumni Weekend our last staff will pack up their bags and head home, and it will just be our year-round team, Peaches and Bowie left at camp, where we’ll set goals for 2025 before we head home ourselves. I moved back to the U.S. after nine years in Israel this past year, and I’m excited to be moving to Needham after camp! I hope to see many of you as I learn my way around Massachusetts. We’ll host a series of Kingswood events starting this fall and winter, and I can’t wait to reconnect with all of you in Florida, NY, Boston, Portland, and anywhere else you are where you’d like to see some Kingswood action during the year! We’ll definitely be doing a Boston camp reunion again this winter, so please mark MLK weekend again in your calendars!
It’s a wrap on Summer 2024, and I can honestly say I have never been more proud to finish a season. Our team has worked magic this summer, and every camper and staff member knows they were a part of something extraordinary this year. Camp Kingswood has been here for 111 summers, and we will be here for at least 111 more.
To our unbelievable parent community, thank you. Thank you for the calls, the texts, the support, the appreciation, but most of all, thank you for the kindness and love you’ve infused into your children, making the Camp Kingswood family one I’m privileged to call my own. I can’t wait for Summer 2025!
Shabbat shalom,
P,S, In case you missed it, registration is officially open! You have until Aug. 31 to pay the Summer Special Rates, and after that, prices increase by $500. Register here today!
