Displaying items by tag: kidsactivities
Look it’s Ashley!
Mid October we happened to be driving by Madison Wi. and decided to stop on in and spend some time with Ashley. It was great fun! She showed us around the downtown area and we even had a bite to eat. (nothing like Michelle’s food :) So we got a talkin about one of Ashleys favorite topics- Arts & Crafts. She was wondering if we could do some more cool activities. “like what?” we wondered. She thought, maybe we could do more age appropriate activities so like older kids could do copper enameling and more clay, even some woodburing or something like that. We thought it was a great idea and so Ashley is busy working on how she can make Arts & Crafts better. If you have any ideas or activities that you feel we should do email Ashley at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Summer camp is a place where mindfulness is promoted each and every day. When we live with others it is important that we take the self out of our actions and think more about the group and what we need to accomplish. Today, business’s are doing the same.....
Developing Mindful Leaders
3:32 PM Friday December 30, 2011 by Polly LaBarre
Organizations invest billions annually on a success curriculum known as "leadership development," which ends up leaving so much on the table. Training and development programs almost universally focus factory-like on inputs and outputs — absorb curriculum, check a box; learn a skill, advance a rung; submit to assessment, fix a problem. Likewise, they leave too many people behind with an elite selection process that fast-tracks "hi-pos" and essentially discards the rest. And they leave most people cold with flavor of the month remedies, off sites, immersions, and excursions — which produce little more than a grim legacy of fat binders gathering dust on shelves.
What if, instead of stuffing people with curricula, models, and competencies, we focused on deepening their sense of purpose, expanding their capability to navigate difficulty and complexity, and enriching their emotional resilience? What if, instead of trying to fix people, we assumed that they were already full of potential and created an environment that promoted their long-term well-being?
In other words, what if cultivating a successful inner life was front and center on the leadership agenda?
At the time, Pierce was benefiting personally from work with a personal coach and had recently woken up to the power of the practice ofmindfulness. He called in a kindred soul, Pamela Weiss, a long-time executive coach and meditation teacher, to help design an experiment that would cast out the traditional approach to leadership development to focus instead on helping people grow.
"If you want to transform an organization it's not about changing systems and processes so much as it's about changing the hearts and minds of people," says Weiss. "Mindfulness is one of the all-time most brilliant technologies for helping to alleviate human suffering and for bringing out our extraordinary potential as human beings."
Pierce and Weiss distilled a set of principles that form the basis of what became the "Personal Excellence Program" (PEP), now heading into its sixth year inside Genentech (Pierce left the company this fall after 11 years to join salesforce.com). Together, these pillars offer up a short course in unleashing human capability, resilience, compassion, and well-being (and they're unpacked in even more detail in Weiss and Pierce's entry).
1. Developing people is a process — not an event.
2. People don't grow from the neck up.
3. Put mindfulness at the center (but don't call it that!).
4. It's hard to grow alone.
5. Everybody deserves to grow.
As PEP heads into its sixth year at Genentech, some 800 people have participated in the program. (Weiss added a graduate curriculum and a student training program to create "PEPtators" as few people want the journey to end.) The impact has been nothing short of transformative for individuals and organization alike. When Pierce took over the IT department in 2002, its employee satisfaction scores were at rock bottom; four years into the program, the department ranked second in the company and is now consistently ranked among the best places to work in IT In the world (even in the wake of Genentech's 2009 merger with Roche Group — always a turbulent and dispiriting experience).
Pierce attributes that to "the emotional intelligence of people and the capacity to change" developed in PEP. But don't take his word for it. The data-obsessed Pierce commissioned a third path impact report on PEP. It came in glowing: 10-20% increase in employee satisfaction, 50% increase in employee collaboration, conflict management, and communication; 12% increase in customer satisfaction; and nearly three times the normal business impact.
"Through PEP we have created a smarter, more agile, and more responsive organization," says Pierce. "The reduction of suffering, the capacity to deal with difficulties, the level of engagement — these things are very powerful and you can't call a meeting to get them or give people stock options and have them. These are skills and qualities you have to cultivate and practice."
So how's this for a new year's resolution for hard-charging leaders: turn every ringing, pinging, tweeting, and blinking thing off — especially your mind — and just breathe.
Fortunately, for all of us our cook Michelle never has days like these.
Watch more of this Lucy Show Here
At Swift Nature Camp our Arts-and-Crafts programs flourish because the we recognizes the value of a balanced program of activities that includes Running around, Teamwork adventure, and Art. Equally important, these programs flourish because we accept campers who just try new things. Be it, tye dye, pottery, painting, leather or popsicle stick art. Yet, at the same time we challenge campers to refine their crafty skills, solve problems, and create new works of art. Our goal is to help define the brains and souls of our campers. SNC staff becomes actively involved in the mission of positivly nurturing youth development. In this way Arts and Crafts is a part of this process. And as an bonus, some lucky grandparents or parents and may get a beautiful piece of art.... or a lanyard keychain.
Look it’s Ashley!
Mid October we happened to be driving by Madison Wi. and decided to stop on in and spend some time with Ashley. It was great fun! She showed us around the downtown area and we even had a bite to eat. (nothing like Michelle’s food :) So we got a talkin about one of Ashleys favorite topics- Arts & Crafts. She was wondering if we could do some more cool activities. “like what?” we wondered. She thought, maybe we could do more age appropriate activities so like older kids could do copper enameling and more clay, even some woodburing or something like that. We thought it was a great idea and so Ashley is busy working on how she can make Arts & Crafts better. If you have any ideas or activities that you feel we should do email Ashley at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Experts tell us the first step in becoming an environmentalist is noticing what nature offers. Such observation often leads to a desire and commitment to conserve and protect the natural world.
However, with out having a purpose many times staff and campers merely walk along the trail without really noticing what is around them. They overlook the sounds, sights, textures and diversity of the ecosystem.
Please read these simple programs that can be done while walking through the woods. You may need suppliesbut it will take only a few minutes to get them.
One you feel you have a feel for these activities invite your childrens friends to come along, I'm sure they too will enjoy being away from their scheduled lives and enjoy the peace of nature,
Look Down
Supplies: Yarn and scissors
Ahead of time: Cut the yarn into 15-inch pieces, have one for every two campers.
Assignment: Move off the trail, and make a square on the ground with the yarn. Study what you find within the square. What lives there? What is the soil like? What grows there? Use a stick and dig into the ground a little. What do you see?
Conversation: What did you find in the square or circle that surprised you?
Changes
Supplies: Clipboard and writing utensils
Ahead of time: think or research how things would be different if the land was developed
Assignment: Stop along the trail and look into the woods. Imagine that the land had sold this plot of land to a developer to build. How would that development changethings? What effect would it have on the habitat and food supplies of the animals living there? What would happen to the soil if the trees were cut down? How would the plants in the woods change? How would the threat of erosion increase?
Conversation: How have ecosystems near your home been destroyed? What changes have happened to the land?
Look a Tree
Supplies: Blindfolds
|Ahead of time: look for a place on the trail where there is a variety of trees.
Assignment: Find a partner and decide who will be blindfolded first. The sighted partner will lead his/her partner to a tree. The blindfolded child will explore the tree by touch and smell. Then the sighted partner leads his/her partner away from the tree. Once the blindfold is removed, that camper tries to locate the tree. Switch places and repeat.
Conversation: What have you learned about trees that you didn't know before?
Swift Nature Camp hopes this information give you few a simple projects we do at our camp out in Nature. If you child is interested in these sorts of activities Please look at our website and see if we might be part of your summer plans,
If this is your first time thinking about Summer Camp look at Summer Camp Advice a free website that helps parents fing the right camp for thier child.
About the authors: Jeff and Lonnie Lorenz are the directors of Swift Nature Camp, a non-competitive, traditional overnight Animal Summer Camp. Boys and Girls Ages 6-15 enjoy nature & animals along with traditional camping activities. As a Summer Kids CampSwift specializes in programs for the First Time Campers as well as Adventure Teen Camp programs
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• Be sure that you feel comfortable in the camp you have selected. Call the director a few times with in the first week to make sure your child is doing well. Now that you have no safety reason to worry it time to try and move on.
• Enroll in a special interest class. While your kid is away learning something new during the break, you too could see this as an opportunity to also address your personal interests. You could try enrolling in cooking classes or yoga courses. Whatever your preference might be, there is an available adult summer class for you.
• Date Night ! I once had a parent tell me”Now that the kids are not home me and the misses are going to be home all night in our undies” I don’t know if you need to do this but you can go out for a nice dinner and see a movie.
• Learn a hobby. You could learn how to do cross-stitching, baking, photography, or other things that interests you. This is the perfect time because your children won’t be around in a few days so nobody could disturb you. So take a class at the park or Jr. College.
• Finish or start reading your piles of books and finish watching your tons of DVDs . Nothing beats days of lazily doing nothing in the house and just being a couch potato. It would feel like you are back to being a teenager again because there are no kids to tend to.
• Pamper yourself for a day in the spa and a stroll in the mall to shop. Surely, you won’t really be depressed if you experience the things you love, right?
Remember camp is a growing experience for our children but at the same time its getting us ready for the day they move out to college.
