The 5 R’s: How We Think About Camp

Each year, our director team attends conferences and reads the latest research and literature to deepen our understanding of youth development and how it relates to the camp experience. Over time, I’ve come to three conclusions:

1. The overnight summer camp experience has the potential to be one of the most important developmental experiences a child can have outside the home.
2. Many parents aren’t fully aware of the developmental benefits of camp.
3. Many camp directors aren’t either. As a result, camps aren’t always as intentional about delivering (or communicating) these benefits as they could be.

Camp Should Be Fun First
I want to be clear: camp absolutely must be a blast. Laughter, joy, fun, and outdoor activity are central to a great camp experience. Simply getting a break from normal life, playing outside, dressing up in costumes, and acting like a kid for two weeks is reason enough to come to camp.

The Learning Happens Anyway
When I think back on my own camp experience, I remember new friends, outdoor adventures, and dancing onstage to Grease Lightning. I don’t remember youth development… but it was happening anyway. I only recognized its impact later in life, when I noticed that friends who attended camp often carried a confidence, independence, and grit that many others did not.

What Camp Helps Children Develop
As I’ve shared before, campers develop social skills by living with peers who start as strangers and end as friends. Their self-efficacy grows as they overcome fears. Learning new skills builds confidence in their ability to tackle challenges. Campers develop independence when they realize they can survive, and even thrive, away from home. And within the supportive camp environment, kids are free to be themselves, rather than who the “in” crowd expects them to be.

Our Mission at Camp Pinnacle
Our mission is to offer the safest, most exciting, and most meaningful summer camp experience possible through personal attention to every camper, genuine care, and professional competence. We work hard to impact every child by helping them develop critical skills and ensuring they feel known, supported, and appreciated.

The 5 R’s That Guide Our Work

To further this mission, we focus our attention on what we call the 5 R’s: Respect, Responsibility, taking Reasonable Risks, Reaching Out to others, and building Resilience.
Here are some of the ways the 5Rs show up at camp:
Respect
We encourage respect by modeling it in the way we treat one another every day. Some of they ways campers see respect at camp are across ages and genders through strong brother and sister relationships and by learning to speak kindly and thoughtfully about others. We also teach respect for the natural world by taking every camper into the backcountry, helping them identify trees and animals, and practicing Leave No Trace principles together.
Responsibility
We reinforce responsibility every day. Campers and counselors take care of their belongings, participate in cabin inspections, and help with meal clean-up. Older campers earn increased independence, such as traveling to activities as a group without a counselor or mountain biking in the Enchanted Forest with a partner. We intentionally teach campers to take ownership of their experience.
Reasonable Risk
Psychologists agree that children will take risks. The challenge for parents and educators is helping children engage in constructive risks like auditioning for a play or learning a new skill rather than dangerous ones. Camp provides daily opportunities for reasonable risk, whether climbing the tower, mountain biking, jumping from log to log on the Lognasium, or performing in skits.
Reaching Out
We want campers to learn to reach out and support others. We celebrate acts of kindness and encourage campers to help cabin mates. Reaching out also means forming friendships across ages, genders, backgrounds, and perspectives.
Resilience
Life includes challenges, setbacks, and failures. Resilience is the ability to face those moments and bounce back. Many youth professionals worry that children today don’t get enough practice doing this. Like building muscle, resilience strengthens through regular challenge. Camp is an ideal place for this growth because campers are away from home, facing real challenges, supported by caring counselors, while still feeling a sense of independence.
Why This Matters
This may be as “heavy” as we camp professionals get, but we thought you’d enjoy learning more about what we strive to achieve at Camp Pinnacle. Our campers are having incredible amounts of fun! That fun is intentionally woven together with meaningful opportunities for growth, often without them even realizing it’s happening.