Camp KV 2010 is over and there are some things that went right and some that can be improved. Things that went right should be persisted with for future events too. 🙂 . This post could be useful for future task forces.
Here are some things that went right:
1) Dinner preparations started at 6pm and Dinner at 6.30 pm. This is little bit early as compared to our previous campings. But it worked well since we could finish dishes also in daylight itself. The first Dinner session took just 45 mins to complete. WOW !!!. The Sun Dinner Session took 1 hr 15 mins which is good also.
2) First 10 mins of dinner session devoted to parents of kids only so that they can take food for kids. This worked out great.
3) No tents near campfire center. This worked out great also and we had enough free space around campfire center.
4) Citronella candles worked great. No bugs during food sessions.
5) Croissants were a hot favorite. Never knew Toasted Croissants tasted so yummy.
6) Juice prepared with Tang worked out very well. We should stop taking refrigerated juice and instead take powered drinks by which we can save on space.
7) Putting up tentative schedule helped people plan their activities.
8 ) Cutting down group food sessions from 3 to 2 helped on organizing front. Individual food sessions meant no one was in a hurry. You can eat your food at your own leisure.
9) Putting up the Camping Sheet Printout with a nail to the tree proved helpful for people to find out who has what.
Things that can be improved:
1) Maybe put all items (including paper products, food items, etc) related to a session in one box and label that box. That way we dont have to hunt around searching for which box contains what items. This distribution should be done at home itself.
2) Campfire still does not have participation from everyone. Play some sitting games that will involve everyone or explicitly call out each family.
3) Bananas did not work out that well with kids. Should this be replaced with some other finger fruit ?
4) Lot of struggle with lighter as usual. Need a good instant lighter. 🙂
If you have suggestions / comments please put them down here for the benefit of future task forces.
Jump rope was a big hit.
Group items should be brought and kept at one place rather than telling people each time to bring more of those items
Some of the group items like vessels, can opener, sugar, tea, chopping board, etc are really standard items which are required year after year. A standard list of such group items should be made and kept aside. Just the quantity would differ.
So in effect the camping lists would be :
1) personal items list
2) Standard group items list
3) Dynamic group items list which change from year to year.
Everything should be Jain food, Task Force shouldn’t be part of serving non-jain food :-). Also because kids who don’t eat non-jain food get tempted to eat it since all there friends are having it. Its like all the effort of teaching them to avoid gets drained away… after all they are small kids.
Should find an alternative for Camp fire – by Camp fire i mean lighting the actual fire – No Jeev Hinsa.
Apart from Jump rope i thought that Badminton was a BIG HIT too, thanks to people on site 14 i guess it was for setting up the tents a bit far away which helped us setting up the badminton area.
* Hit game among kids was Scooter & exploring Meadow.
* Stacking Paper product for Garbage during Sat. dinner was good idea. May be we should have continued that for other meals too.
* Extra snack bags during campfire were welcoming. Mixing some healthy munchies like Wheat Thins, Multi Grain/Baked Chips could be added pluse. 🙂