The Mixing of Age Groups

The Mixing of Age Groups

Slightly edited for consistency, here is an email we received from a camp supporter:  “Please share with your camp families what a great job Kingwood does with mixing ages.  It is so great that kids don’t have to eat every meal with their bunks and spend all their time with people of their own age.  The interpersonal dynamics of having a bunk eat all of their meals together every day for their whole tenure can really wear some kids down. Mix them up! Dilute the pathology!  It makes for such a more cohesive community and helps the kids make a lot more friends. The younger ones get the modeling and support of older boys who get to share their love of camp with the younger kids – it’s genius.”

Kingswood is small enough in size so that every boy can have a reasonable chance at knowing every other camper. That is not to say that everyone knows everyone intimately well, but after the first few days, no one is a stranger to anyone else.  This simple dynamic of one’s presence in a community our size is what allows the mixing of ages in the dining hall to be so effective; no one is eating with random people (though table assignments are thoroughly random); everyone is seated with someone that he has seen about the grounds and thus finding common topics of conversation is inevitable.

On the sports front, Kingswood’s spin on competition is a unique one. It is, in part, designed to mix age groups and build community. Yes, we offer competitive tournaments both within our own camp (PGB, a night-time basketball festival) and with other camps (Baker Valley round-robins) that are age specific, but that is not the bulk of our programming.  The main purpose of many afternoon and evening activities is to have them NOT be age specific; senior campers are taught the value of including everyone in the mix of the game while younger campers learn the value of working hard to get moments of participation. This is also how the mixing of age groups in these activities directly contributes to the type of community Kingswood seeks to create.

Kingswood’s trips program offers the best opportunity of them all for an appropriate synthesis of the ages.  Every summer, we discover young campers who can keep up on hikes with older boys.  We call these little guys “backpacks with feet,” a reference to how they look to trampers behind them in the line.  Last summer, one eleven year old boy hiked 29 mountains in a seven week summer –without a doubt a camp record.  Many of those hikes were billed as “varsity caliber,” meaning that experience was a prerequisite.  This youngster simply did one hike after another, each time upping the degree of difficulty to his personal agenda.  The older boys, by virtue of being veteran Kingswood mountaineers, may have been skeptical at first by having along such a relatively inexperienced hand, but soon recognized that the younger camper met the proficiency standards for that sort of hike and thereafter welcomed him along for every excursion.  Kingswood at its very best!

At the end of almost every day, we bring the full camp community together one last time: a campfire, an ice-cream party, a talent show, our infamous Egg Drop- the list goes on and on. Not only do these events culminate the day and bring a sense of closure, they are also instrumental in developing a true sense of community. It is also here that many of the “inside” camp jokes and references are born. Perhaps even more important, it is at these events that many individuals are “discovered” by everyone.

Lastly, for boys in the same cabin to get away from each other for a bit of time each day is healthy. Just as teenagers value their time away from their home, campers profit from time away from the cabins too. Kingswood does a good job at balancing the time away from the cabin where boys are not just confined to interactions within their age group. So we urge them to “Get outside the cabin and earn your spot in the Kingswood world.”