Once you and your children have chosen a camp that matches their interests and abilities, a crucial next step is getting ready physically. Following the guidelines below will help ensure a healthy, happy experience.

1. Camps are physically active places, even for differently-abled campers. Engaging in some pre-camp fun and physical activities will help your children get the most out of the summer ahead. If your children do not participate in organized sports, then go on some hikes together, join a pick-up game of basketball, play catch in the back yard, or frequent the municipal swimming pool. Anything you can do to help your children gear up to the physicality of the camp experience will be of great benefit once camp starts.
2. If you have explored a preparatory resource such as The Summer Camp Handbook, then you have familiarized yourself with the camp’s activities. Either way, you should gain a good sense of the physical demands of your chosen camp. Now is the perfect time to take your children for a physical exam or other health evaluations. Speak to your health care provider about the camp’s various activities and verify that they are fit and ready to take part in activities. You might ask questions such as:

• Does he need new glasses or sports glasses?
• Is the leg she injured this winter ready for mountain hikes?
• What can we do to prevent another bout of swimmer’s ear?

If your child has a chronic medical condition, such as asthma or an allergy, your conversation with a health care provider takes on added importance. Discuss with your child:

• restrictions or modifications to activities
• ongoing treatments or preventive measures, such as carrying a rescue inhaler or avoiding certain foods

Your goal is to make your children as self-reliant as possible, so that they can participate in the fullest range of activities.

It is essential that you complete and return the camp’s health form, and write a supplement that describes all of your child’s emotional or physical needs. At times, parents are reluctant to be candid on the camp’s health form because they are concerned about:

• the information not being kept confidential
• the camp staff unfairly discriminating against their child

Some parents are unaware of the importance of detailed health forms to camp staff who act as summer surrogate parents.

High quality camps will treat any personal information about your children with great discretion, informing only those persons who need to know (e.g., the camp nurse and your child’s counselors); no high quality camp will label your children or discriminate against them. So please inform the camp if one or more of your children take medication, have a history of emotional or behavioral problems, was recently hospitalized, or responds best to a certain kind of treatment.

Simply put: Don’t make the camp staff try to figure out what may have taken you years to understand about your children. Instead, give the staff the advantage of your parental insights and experience. This puts them in the best possible position to offer support.

Although a cornerstone of the camping experience-day or resident-is the absence of parents, in no way does it involve the absence of camp caregivers. Quite the contrary: High quality camping experiences require a trusting partnership between parents and the camp staff. For more information about physical and medical preparation for camp, read The Summer Camp Handbook.

Enjoy the summer!

Dr. Christopher Thurber

For additional parent resources, visit: SummerCampHandbook.com
Learn about high quality staff training at: ExpertOnlineTraining.com

Hello again, Camp Enthusiasts!

We’re here once more to go over another one of our new products for the coming camp season this summer.

Last time we took a close look at one of the new C&N camp trunks—The Hex Trunk. Today’s blog post will cover the alternative new footlocker we’re offering this camp season geared more toward girls, the NEW Botanical Explosion Trunk.

The NEW Botanical Explosion Camp Trunk bears an elegant design imagined and created by our own graphic designer, Meghan.

This trunk makes a colorful splash that’s as wild and pure as a real flower garden in your grandmother’s backyard. It’s fun, whimsical, and celebratory. This flowery footlocker just may be right for you.

We take Meghan’s summery design and have it specially printed on each of the ten panels of the trunk. This camp trunk is the same size as the popular Happy Camper but with a much more flair.

Despite its fragile appearance, The Botanical Explosion Trunk owns up to the same rugged C&N construction we give all our trunks. And the inside is lined with odorless, water and tear-resistant DuraWrap Liner.

The other day when we covered the NEW Hex Trunk, we went into what C&N construction means. In case you missed it, here was the gist:

When Everything Summer Camp first got started in 1987, all we sold were our footlockers. We weren’t called Everything Summer Camp; we were C&N Footlockers, named after the owners Craig and Nancy. Because we make our own trunks here in our facility, we still brand each one with the C&N Footlockers emblem.

Our camp footlockers have continuously outdone our competitors’ in terms of both quality and fashion. That’s why we stand behind and on top of our footlockers—because they’re the best.

Get the NEW Botanical Explosion Trunk this summer for your trip to camp. And, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

This is the first blog post in which we’ll be showcasing one of the new products we now carry. Blog posts such as this one will not only update you on the new products we’re carrying but will also make your summer camp shopping easier.

The new product we’ll be talking about today is the NEW Hex Trunk. How do you arrive at summer camp sporting the coolest style and newest gear? Bring this trunk.

The Hex Trunk bears a brilliant motif created by our own graphic designer, Meghan. Shades of purple and green decorate this footlocker in clusters and strands of hexagons. It’s methodical, logical, yet cool. We take Meghan’s design and have it specially printed on all ten trunk panels.

It’s one sharp sight to see!

The same size as the popular Happy Camper, the NEW Hex Trunk is as spacious as it is solid! Built to last with C&N quality, it’s lined inside with water-resistant, odorless, and virtually tear-proof liner. The Hex Trunk is magical!

We remain modest people here at Everything Summer Camp. But credit is deserved where credit is due and our camp trunks are simply the best you can find.

Now for a brief history of our business to fully understand what C&N quality means:

Before Everything Summer Camp sold everything you might need at summer camp, it only sold its trademark camp trunks and the accessories directly applied to the trunks. The company wasn’t called Everything Summer Camp back then; it was called C&N Footlockers, named after the owners Craig and Nancy.

Now that we’ve become so much more than just footlockers, we’ve changed our name to something that’s more inclusive and more indicative of what we sell. But since we construct every trunk that we sell right here in our own facility, we still brand each trunk with the C&N Footlockers emblem.

For the last 26 years our footlocker trunks have continued to outdo the competition in terms of both quality of construction and in style. That’s what we mean when we say our footlockers are built to last with durable and dependable C&N quality. That’s why our footlockers are the best.

Set the trends and go with the cool, NEW Hex Trunk for camp this summer!

Hey, Summer Campers!

The other day on the introduction to this blog, I went over all the different topics we’ll be discussing in our posts. Remember?

Well, today I’m posting one of our summer camp celebrity posts where you’ll read all about which summer camps your favorite celebrities attended.

Considering that in America alone, over 10 million kids are going to summer camp every year, it’s not really that surprising to find out who in Hollywood—and how many of them—went to summer camp when they were younger.

Today we’re talking about the all-star actress, Anne Hathaway who attended Camp Johnsonburg in northwestern New Jersey. Back in her summer camp days, she always thought she would become a nun when she grew up, but as we all know, her future would take her down a very different path.

Though she’d already acted in a few stage roles and appeared in the television series Get Real, Anne hit stardom by age 18 when she brought  Mia Thermopolis to life on the big screen in the Disney film The Princess Diaries in 2001. She then played the same character in the movie’s sequel in 2004.

She’s also famous for the roles she played in lots of other movies such as Hoodwinked, The Devil Wears Prada (in which she got to work alongside her idol, Meryl Streep), and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland which she did in 2010.

Two years later, she played Selina Kyle in the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises; and in the same year won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress as Fantine in Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables.

Comparable and reminiscent of such classic actresses as Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland, Anne Hathaway seems a natural celebrity superstar despite her initial aspirations.

I guess her story just goes to show that you really never can tell. And who knows? Maybe you’ll end up on the big screen and eventually be noted in an Everything Summer Camp blog post about celebrities who attended summer camps when they were little! Until next time, camp fans. As always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

An important piece on how to ensure the safety of your child throughout their stay at sleepaway camp, Dr. Chris Thurber—child psychologist, co-author of ‘The Summer Camp Handbook’, and a former summer camper himself—divulges three critical questions that you can ask a camp director to signal how well you can trust the staff members of that camp. In order to highlight the indispensable material of this Blog post, we’ve removed it from our Blog site to include it now in our Camp 101 feature on our main site. To read this excellent Blog post click here.