Fun, creative events are a hallmark of Maine Camp Experience Camps. Each summer, directors and staff run fun, creative, silly and often messy events that campers love! These events may be on lake or land – or combine the two. They’re a fun addition to the daily programming and something campers look forward to year after year. Some events are steeped in the traditions of Maine Camps and have been running for 50 or even 100+ years, and others were created last summer, during the pandemic, when directors were looking for a little extra fun while campers were in their pods – groupings of kids by cabin and/or age group.
Here is a sampling of fun, creative activities at some of our Maine Camps:
Pandemonium – We love Pandemonium Day at our camp! It is essentially a backwards day where everything is mixed up — dessert (brownie sundaes) for breakfast, breakfast for dinner, staff take on different roles – executive director teaches tennis, cabin counselor is our office manager, kids get to sit at different tables, and everything is a mystery of what will happen next. It’s organized chaos and the campers love it! They never know when it is going to happen as it is not announced beforehand.
“Sailing Regatta” – This was a good way to keep kids bunk-centric during Covid. It was fun for campers to get to work together and get creative. We collected boxes that came in June 1st and throughout the month with supplies for the summer. When our maintenance guy said we have soooo many boxes, we decided to give each cabin a few boxes and a couple rolls of duct tape so they could each create a boat. They had to break down the boxes and construct using whatever was inside their cabin. Two criteria applied: 1) Could you get your boat across a lane of the lake? 2) Could you remain dry? It was really fun and funny.
Dirty Day – We started “Dirty Day” our first summer. It began fairly normally with a classic camp color run but then morphed into a Jell-O tug of war, mud pudding slides, and a food fight. We do it every year now and try to find ways to make it even “dirtier.” The kids love it and the pictures are amazing.
Messy Relay – We do a messy relay that is part of a full-day marathon of events for our three oldest age groups. It’s the first out of three competitions during marathon. The girls partner up with someone on their team and do obstacles like sitting on balloons, throwing powdered sugar at each other, rolling through pudding and whipped cream. It’s one of the girls’ favorite events of the summer!
Quest – Quest is a great way early in the summer to have fun and have campers from all ages get to meet each other. There are 16 teams/colors for an all-day, all-camp event. A ton of fun events take place throughout the day including: bucket brigade, Fruit Loop sorting, Gaga tournament, and song and cheer performances. The winning team gets the coveted special Chinese Food take-out dinner at the directors’ cabin.
With fun and creative events like these, there’s definitely no place like camp!
Maine Camp Experience Resources & Tools
You can share your own Maine camps memories & expressions of gratitude on our Memories of Camp section of our website.
Looking for the perfect Maine camp for your child? Try out our helpful tool where you can select a camp by choosing: type of camp (girls, boys or coed) and session length (1-8 weeks). It helps to narrow down a few camps to a manageable list that includes rates. Then you can research these camps in more depth.
Next, be sure to contact our Maine Camp Guide, Laurie to discuss these camps as well as for free, year-round advice and assistance on choosing a great Maine summer camp for your child.
Talk to Laurie, our Maine Campcierge®, about choosing the right camp for your child and what to do in Maine.
Call 877-92-MAINE
