photo credit: Julia Freeman-Woolpert

As August begins to pick up speed, kids country-wide are preparing for the only thing more bittersweet than starting a new school year – preparing to leave for one final session at summer camp.

Perhaps the best thing about living in the Age of Everything is the abundance of choices. Kids dig choices more than anything else, simply because the option to make a decision in the first place – even a short-lived one – makes room for their tiny senses of self to blossom. One of our favorite things about reusable wall decals is the option to choose a particular look one day and change it up the next, over and over again, without feeling a smidgen of decorator’s remorse. Choosing a summer camp requires more commitment, but settling on one truly comes down to deciding between classic or contemporary. Does your son or daughter prefer neat pinstripes or wild patterns? The Roy G. Biv palette or new neons?

When we think of the classic summer camp, we picture wide green lawns, sunny swimming holes, leather saddles, and lightening bugs. Do a bit of research and you’ll find that today’s summer camps supplement the traditional sleepaway experience with workshops that rival graduate school electives. The New York Times recently published a photoessay called “Camp Cuisine, Transformed” about camps that help campers build confidence in the kitchen through rather impressive culinary arts programs. Camp Manitou in Oakland, Maine, is one of a potentially growing number of camps that tacks a cooking and farm-to-table education to a four-star dining service.

At Stagedoor Manor in Loch Sheldrake, New York, stars-to-be can find their stage feet during daily classes in acting, voice, dance, and television, not to mention set decoration, costume design and stage management.

And then there’s the newly born and still quite nascent Occupy Wall Street summer camp, which doesn’t sound camp-ish enough for our tastes, but hey – you never know what the future might hold for the folks who gave life to such an eclectic global movement. Should your child develop an interest in protest culture, an afternoon spent browsing a makeshift library in Zuccotti Park might sound fascinating. We wouldn’t suggest staying overnight, though – there simply aren’t enough lightning bugs in New York City.

Whether your child’s favorite camp is super quirky or simply steeped in tradition, you really can’t beat the bunk experience. For many of us, decorating a bunk was truly a precursor to revamping our own ‘tween bedrooms and bathrooms, and later, designing our first dorm rooms. Many of us were given the same terrific piece of advice during freshman orientation – include a chalkboard or whiteboard in your dorm décor and making friends will be easier than playing tic-tac-toe.

The same philosophy applies when decorating a camp bunk, only the odds that someone will be psyched to have a space for doodling doubles with every new roommate. Removable, reusable, and repositionable chalkboard and dry erase wall decals of the easy-peasy peel-and-stick variety won’t damage bunk walls, and they can be transferred back home (or better yet, to a new school locker) with drawings, messages, and memories still intact. We’re betting that everyone will go home just a bit happier, including the camp counselors in charge of cleaning up once campers are packed up and back on the bus, where they’ll hopefully share one last appetizer, monologue, or meaningful song before the sun sets on another summer.

Is your child’s go-to summer camp a truly modern vacation? We’d love to hear about it! Leave a comment or send an e-mail to hello@wallcandyarts.com.

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