Summer is just around the corner and there’s a lot of information about camp that we want to share. We encourage you to spend some time perusing the content on the six topics of our Parent Play-by-Play.
Parent Play-by-Play #6: Summer Communication
In today’s issue we discuss ways you can interact with your child and their summer camp experience.
There are several ways to stay connected to your child and the happenings at camp including social media, emails, letter writing, photos and the camp blog.
Emergency Hotline: (650) 785-1064
If there is an emergency and you need to reach camp immediately during the summer, please use this number. It will connect to the Leadership Staff member on duty and will be on during all hours of the day.
Please note, this number should only be used in the case of emergencies. Non-emergencies should still be directed to the main camp number (415) 997-8844. If you don’t get us directly it’s because we’re out having fun with your kids though we check messages frequently.
Social Media
Just like our campers, we love social media! Be sure to follow us on Instagram under the handle @maccabisportscamp and LIKE us on Facebook so you can stay on top of what we’re doing, reading, thinking, and feeling. We’d love for you to share our posts and photos with your friends and family too.
CampInTouch
By now you should be familiar with CampInTouch, our online portal for registration and camper forms. Once camp begins, the platform transitions to enable you to stay in touch with your child and the happenings at camp.
The system is user-friendly and we encourage you explore it. Should you have any questions or need help, CampMinder Tech Support is standing by and more than happy to assist. (CampMinder is the software behind CampInTouch.)
CampMinder can be reached at (303) 444-2267; follow the prompts for Parent support. They have extended hours in the summer and are ready to provide assistance to parents and camp families. The CampMinder team is the experts in all things CampInTouch, so please call them with any questions. Further, as they are the experts and we are not, please do not call camp for help with CampMinder related issues like adding guest accounts, trouble with campstamps, and other technical issues.
What can you do via the CampInTouch System?
- Send an email to your child — it will be printed and delivered after lunch
- View camp photo albums and share photos with family & friends
- Add guests to your account so they can see what’s happening at camp
- Download hi-resolution photos (for a fee – sorry, nothing we can do about this)
Emailing Your Camper
CampInTouch allows you and your camper to communicate using eLetters, an email-like system enabling two-way communication. Parents, and guests associated with your account, can log into CampInTouch and write an eLetter that will be received by our office. We print letters daily at 11am and deliver them to campers after lunch.
In past summers, campers have had the ability to send a handwritten note back to their family via the CampInTouch system. That feature will not be available this summer.
We’ve made this decision for a number of reasons. First, we’ve seen over the years that the pressure to write home can be overwhelming for some campers and takes away from the reason they are at camp…to have fun with their friends. Second, camp exists for a lot of reasons and one is to allow children disconnect from home and have an experience that is their own. And lastly, the management of sending letters home, even for a small camp like ours, has become an unpleasant element of camp, often causing stress for parents and campers who expect the communication to mimic that of real time email communication. The expectations of a response and when it is sent leads to parents wondering when and if they’ll hear from their camper which in turn leads to leadership staff having to track down campers, finding out if they’ve written and if they have, did they submit it to be sent home. While seemingly small, this complication presents a distraction from what our staff is here for…to take care of our whole community and ensure they are all having a safe, fun, and amazing time at camp.
We do, however, realize the importance of writing home and so we are implementing a few new standards to ensure you hear from your camper.
Camp will provide postcards to all campers and “strongly encourage” each camper to write home twice per session, regardless of session length. Counselors will also be required to send a letter home with information about themselves and an update on your child. We are also encouraging all parents who’d like to receive a letter from their camper to send paper/stationary and self-addressed stamped envelopes to camp. While this won’t guarantee your child writes home, it will certainly make things easier and more likely.
CampStamps
CampStamps are essentially a currency required to send emails through CampInTouch. Maccabi Sports Camp has arranged for each family to receive 5 CampStamps per camper per parent per week. Sending an eLetter to your camper costs 1 CampStamp. Once your allocation of CampStamps has been used up, parents can purchase additional CampStamps. They are $1.00 each with a minimum purchase of 10 at a time. Please remember that each parent receives 5 CampStamps per week so they will be replenished over the course of the session. CampStamps do not expire and can rollover to next year but they cannot be used at a different camp.
We have chosen the 5 CampStamps option specifically for camper care & philosophical reasons, not reasons related to cost, as we feel that is a healthy level of communication during our session. Receiving mail at camp is one of the great joys of the experience and we strongly encourage families to write to their kids. That said, there is a point when receiving a high volume of letters can be too much, many times causing campers to have feelings of missing home when before there were none. Also, and this is rare, but some campers experience stress due to the pressure of having to respond to each letter. Camp is short and fleeting and we want campers to be in the moment and experience all that it has to offer. If a camper feels they must spend all of their downtime writing letters home, it may severely dampen that experience. We’ve seen this happen each summer and want to encourage parents to keep this in mind as they embark on the summer camp experience.
Again, by all means, write to your child while they are at camp. Campers love to get mail. But please also be sure to set the appropriate expectations with your camper on writing home. Sending 1-3 letters home during a session is a good amount. Anything more than that may adversely affect the wonderfully positive experience you’ve sent them to camp to have.
Letter Writing
One of the last places letters are still exchanged is summer camp. It’s a great way to communicate and very exciting for campers to receive an actual letter in the mail. To ensure your letter reaches your camper while a camp, we recommend mailing letters 1-2 days prior to the start of camp and no later than 5 days before the end of the session. CSUEB has an on-site mailroom though due to limited summer hours, it may take a day or 2 longer for a letter to get to your camper.
Mailing Address (and suggested formatting)
Camper’s Name
c/o Maccabi Sports Camp (Cal State East Bay)
1901 Harder Road
Hayward, CA 94542
Photos
Our summer photo system within your CampInTouch account provides a fantastic way for you and your family, friends, and guests to have a window into your camper’s summer experience.
When you access the photo system within CampInTouch, you’ll see photo albums and a season selector at the top of the screen, which gives you easy access to great camp memories from years past.
The photo system has a mobile-optimized navigation menu across the bottom of the page, allowing easy navigation on all kinds of devices. Clicking or tapping into an album gives you an endlessly streaming page of photos, with a column layout custom-tailored to your device of choice. Selecting a photo gives you a much larger view of that image, and from there, you can swipe or use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the entire album.
An important note regarding camp photos…
The photos we share are intended to offer each family an opportunity to see our general program and get a sense of the overall camp experience. There are lots of great moments happening at camp every day and we want to share them with you so you can gain a better understanding of what your child is experiencing. That said, photos are not meant to be a camper specific check-in. Meaning, it is not our goal to post photos so that every family can see their child every day and be able to know how their child is doing. Should a photo capture your child with anything less than a beaming smile, that’s ok too. Camp is about ups and downs and we’ve found that there are a lot more ups than downs. But, should it happen, keep in mind that a photo is a moment in time and may not be representative of the overall experience a particular child is having.
Should you want to get a better sense of your child’s experience, please call us. Joel, the camp director, or any number of other Leadership Staff are more than happy to give you a report on how your child is doing and maybe even snap a photo of them having a great time!
Sharing and purchasing photos is easy as well. Simply hover over a photo and use the buttons to download, share, or add the photo to your shopping cart. We hope you enjoy this feature and use it as a means to experience camp alongside your camper this summer.
We are taking a lot of pictures at camp and promise to share them with you. We will post a new batch three times a week on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
To view all of the topics in this series, click here.
