gather round the campfire! @summercampvibes - Tumblr Blog

Having spent the better part of three hours teaching teenage boys to knit and crochet, I will say that it was an unexpectedly pleasant experience. They took it very seriously and were very intent on getting it right, and were very pumped when I told them they were doing it right. A highlight of the night occurred when one guy moved on from crocheting with a hook to knitting with needles, and his friend (still crocheting) looked over in absolute astonishment and said “woah, when did you get two sticks?!”

#love to teach kids and see them Get It

miiilowo

i think it is unjust to deny a child their right to dig a hole motivelessly

miiilowo

when i was 12 i was out there with a shovel for no reason

#we do this at the camp i work at

blazevillains-deactivated202504

always astounds me when adults hate kids cause like. did you just Forget about how unfair the world seemed when YOU were a child?? do you not remember being upset about how no adult ever seemed to respect you or listen to you at all? and now youre gonna just go on and treat kids like the way you hated being treated when you were one. ok

lightblueminecraftorchid

Quick fun fact I learned in ASL class:

Babies can begin signing as early as a few months old. You don’t have to wait until they’re 9-12 months to start communicating verbally; the parts of the brain that process and use language develop before a baby is able to speak intelligibly with their mouth. Teaching your kid sign language early means that they can communicate effectively months ahead of schedule, when compared to peers that only speak a spoken language.

Additional fun fact: this jumpstart in language is thought to be a possible way to avoid the “Terrible Twos”; that phase of a toddler’s life is thought to be largely due to a toddler being unable to effectively communicate their needs. If a two year old has already been speaking for a year and a half, they’re far more able to communicate to you what’s wrong. Heck, they might also start reading earlier; languages with a fingerspelling component, like ASL, mean that any speaker needs to be able to spell unfamiliar words and ask about them. This can jumpstart a toddler’s ability to recognize letters as components of a word, and teach them to spell, read, and eventually write these letters to communicate.

Which, of course, lends absolutely zero credence to the theory that ASL will inherently stunt someone’s spoken language skills. If anything, sign language fluency makes acquiring any language, spoken or not, easier rather than harder.

st-mchn

I once babysat a baby around a year old who knew sign language, the other older kids knew it as well and the whole family was hearing. I asked, and they said nobody they knew was deaf, but it was better for the children to communicate earlier. They gave me a little babysitter translation guide with the different signs I should know and this absolutely tiny nonverbal one year old spent the night telling me exactly what he wanted to eat, when he had to go to the bathroom, what shows he wanted to watch. He even seemed kind of amused at how slow I was to understand his signing. I left feeling absolutely amazed. If I ever had a kid (unlikely) there’s no way I wouldn’t so this with them.

sigynpenniman

A short list of things I think everyone should try or do at least once in their life that will make you feel more alive. Not all of these are applicable to every person, but it’s a summary:

Take a dance class of any style with a semi-serious instructor for at least 4 classes worth

Write a work of fiction, of *any* length and *any* quality

Learn a least a bit of a language that isn’t your native one. You don’t need to become anywhere near fluent, but try and get a bit beyond yes, no, and where’s the bathroom. If you’re from a country where most people are bilingual already, that doesn’t count! Get bits of a language with which you are truly unfamiliar.

In the same vein, make peace with subtitles and start consuming music, TV and movies from cultures that aren’t your own. If your country imports large amounts of media from a specific other culture or cultures (American movies in foreign markets, for example) that also doesn’t count! Get some feelers out to begin to take in content from a culture that you don’t already have a lot of knowledge of.

Try at least one less common/less “exercisey” and more fun type of physical exercise such as roller blading or roller or ice skating, gymnastics, trampoline, rock climbing, aerial silks, pole dancing, surfing, etc

Learn a hobby or craft that produces a physical finished product and produce a single, complete object - regardless of quality - that you can hold in your hands and say that you made.

Look up a how it’s made video or YouTube video on how an item that’s interesting or relevant to you is made

Give one type of thing - media, hobby, sport, whatever - that you’ve never been interested in or never tried because of some preconceived perception an honest shot and see if your perception was correct. Sometimes it won’t be, sometimes it will be, but it’s valuable to know.

Rearrange the furniture in a room in your home

It’s about NOVELTY, babey! Get some enrichment into your enclosure!

penmaries

I’ve been doing all of these things and my brain and body feel so nice

slowlikehoney1996

grounding techniques, ok 5 things i can see. ugly man. shitty palm tree. clear evidence of air pollution. conservative bumper stickers. roadkill. why do i feel worse

kittwalker

I used to do the 5 things you see, 4 things you hear etc with my daughter when she was spiralling, but it had a low success rate. Just didn't engage her brain, was too easy to just list shit things that made her feel shit.

I had to get creative.

Now we do shit like:

5 things you can see that you could easily steal without being noticed

4 things you think might be sticky if you licked them

3 things that you could fit in your mouth at once

2 inanimate objects that in another dimension, might fall in love

1 thing you can see that isn't made of cheese, but would be better if was

Obviously not those ones every time, I gotta keep mixing things up, else she doesn't have to really focus. Your mileage may vary, but it mostly works for us.

spotlessmy-deactivated20210523

this was a great read. “Laziness Does Not Exist” by Devon Price

z-nogyrop

truly cannot overstate how important it is for everyone to do research into local insect species and just try to notice them when you go outside. there are beautiful metallic blue mud dauber wasps where i live and they’re common in the summer but i just never noticed them until this past year. there are so many dragonflies at the local park. in one walk this june i found ebony jewelwing damselflies and an enormous stinkbug and an emerald-coloured tiger beetle and there is honest to god so much beauty in the insect world if you are willing to look for it

i think a lot of my problems would be solved if i just plunged into an alpine lake in the summer sun

#summer camp #camp counselor #counselor #camp #summer #aesthetic #outdoors #adventures

acesvega-deactivated20240116

something i've noticed. people seem to think the most nature-y nature is forests. so forests are always prioritized for conservation, and planting trees is synonymous with ecological activism. my state was largely prairies and wetlands before colonization. those ecosystems are important too. trees aren't the end-all be-all of environmentalism. plant native grasses. protect your wetlands.

withswords

deserts also!!! it sucks so bad that people think of desert as 'wasteland' just because it's not suited for western european style ag development, they're beautiful and delicate and valuable ecosystems and, i think it's good to point out that humans have been living willingly in them for thousands of years

#plants #nature #conservation