What did your kids do at summer camp?
In Grays Harbor County more than 70 first-through-fifth graders had the time of their lives and learned some pretty valuable lessons about healthier living during a two-week 4-H day camp at Elma.
The annual day camp was organized by the staff and faculty of the WSU Cooperative Extension office in Grays Harbor County. The community of Elma pitched in to provide meals and scholarships for campers who needed a little help with the $20 registration fee. The county provided free bus transportation.
The idea was to give kids in this economically depressed corner of the state something fun and worthwhile to do. “There’s just not anything for kids to do here in the summer,” said Linda Thompson, principal assistant in the Grays Harbor Cooperative Extension office.
This year, camp activities were organized around “Health Rocks!” a new curriculum developed by the National 4-H Council to curb use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs among kids 10 to 15. That’s when most young people make decisions about smoking, drinking and using illicit drugs, according to Doris Torkelson, area extension educator in Grays Harbor County.
Lessons were interactive and involved a lot of physical activity.
“One [lesson] was to give everybody a straw and have them sit quietly and breathe through it,” Torkelson explained. “We had the kids run in place for 30 seconds and told them to hold their nose and breathe through the straws. We did about three rounds. We did that to demonstrate what it’s like to have emphysema and made the point that one way to avoid emphysema is to avoid smoking.”
Campers also wrote new lyrics for old songs and performed them. The new lyrics featured an anti-smoking message.
The campers also played pin-the-disease-on the-body. They drew cards describing a disease resulting from smoking. Blindfolded, they tried to tape the cards on the part of a gingerbread figure that the disease affected.
The health messages were wrapped in fun and games. “They don’t need to be preached to,” Torkelson said. “The activities made them think.”
One of the goals of the camp was to show the kids how they could manage stress in a healthy way.
“Many people smoke when they are stressed out and it calms them down,” Torkelson said, “but they become addicted and that creates more stress and that doesn't answer the source of the stress or teach them how to deal with it.
“A lot of the things we did were to show the kids what they could do instead of using drugs, alcohol or cigarettes to counter stress, such as deep breathing, talking with friends and removing themselves temporarily from stressful situations.
"We did some organized, physical activity with the kids every day to help then learn lifelong healthy habits of exercise. We also did games outside where they ran a lot. "