How Roughing It Prepares Kids to Take on the World
Team building skills are more important than ever for children today. Over half of the jobs our campers will do as adults will be working in teams. Teamwork has always been a key part of the Roughing It Camp experience. We designed our camp in 1972 as a group experience so campers could learn to work, play, and live together in the outdoors.
After reading about the importance of effective teamwork in Google’s Study ARISTOTLE, we decided to give our campers a higher level of “challenges” to develop greater teamworking skills at Roughing It.
Last Summer we launched GRIT—The Great Roughing It Team Challenge Program during our second session of camp. GRIT Challenges were a series of fun, creative team building activities aimed at developing teamwork skills to achieve common goals. As a group, they chose what challenges to undertake, worked together on solutions and succeed – as a team!
Project Aristotle found 5 Factors for a successful Team. We used these 5 factors in GRIT Challenge:
- Psychology Safety: Campers belong to a group where, in 3 or 7 weeks, they’ve developed great relationships .
- Dependability: Campers over time had created a supportive community
- Structure & Clarity: Every camper had a certain role, and the counselor was there to moderate.
- Meaning: How they worked together was important to each group because the campers chose their ‘challenges” themselves.
- Impact: Campers chose their own group challenges and had fun & took pride in achieving their results.
Every camper group gets a GRIT Passport with Challenge Choices available. Of all the available choices, the “Create Your Own Challenge” choice turned out to be the most amazing! The B3 group made a raft and launched it at canoeing time; the B5/6 group made a 5-foot high Lizard Hut; the Junior High Girls made up and rode their own Cross Country Obstacle Course at riding; finally, the Kindergarten group hiked the lower trail all the way around the lake with their G2 buddies!
We are proud of all our campers and staff, as GRIT turned out to be the highlight of everyone’s summer! Working in their groups, campers used their imaginations along with the physical skills they had learned at Camp, to collaborate and preserve through their challenge, ultimately achieving incredible outcomes!
These team building experiences from GRIT increased the real – world skills and life lessons our campers need to lead happy and productive lives now and in their future!
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Aristotle
All campers can look forward to more Team building & GRIT Challenges to come in 2019!
— Amy, Ann, and Hobie Woods & Gus the Camp Dog
