3rd and 4th Year Camper Program

[furby]

This year our Summer Camp will be offering a new program aimed at 3rd year and older scouts. This program will have 1 day of COPE, a 2 day challenge, a open day for the scouts to work on merit badges, with the final day we will be taking them either canoeing or hiking. Also this program will be staffed by 2-3 staff members.
Does anyone know of some really good activities that we can use to keep the youth motivated? If anyone has a program like this what do you do at your camp? Also for the challenge days should there be more of a focus on team building, leadership or scout skills?

[Mrw]

Sounds nice.

I would say team building and/or leadership skills. They should know the scout skills by now.

[ThunderingWind]

I like the Tribe of Mic-O-Say, Tribe of Lone Bear, or the Firecrafter program. All build on the Scouting skiils learned and pays special attention to the service with heart attitude a Scout should have.

But as mentioned above - team building, playing in the mud and gettin' totally covered, challenge the Scouts with extensions of MBs by raising the standard (Rfile score for one), have them build one of the great pioneering towers that are 40+ feet high with an observation deck, find a highly technical rock face to climb (within the G2SS rules)......build a Tom Sawyer raft and cross the lake, Olympic Archery - Junior distance of 90m and 70m.....

[FieldSports]

I have seen themes work well:

Mountain Man day - Hawks, Blackpowder, tan a hide, logging, FUN
Extreme Mountain Biking - down hill, fast FUN
Scuba - Intro
Survivor Island - Major FUN

[Bill Pitcher]

We have such a program at Camp Tri-Mount in the Catskills of NY. Some of the activities offered include caving, sailing and knee boarding on the Hudson (run by venture crew Ship 609), horseback riding, mountain biking, tubing on the Esopus River, high peaks backpacking, emergency training exposure (spending a day with a rescue squad and a day with a fire dept.). As you can see, our Camp Director likes to mix it up!

[smtroop168]

In the camps we have attended they have offered the following High Adventure activities. Some as part of a package some as individual activities:

3D Archery
Powder Shooting
Horseback riding
Motorboating
Water Skiiing
Scuba
Boardsailing
Whitewater
Aviation
Rock Climbing
High sea sailing on the Chesapeake
Quadathelon competition: Run, Row, Shoot, Swim