"Home is where the heart is"... "There's no place like home."..."Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to." No matter how you look at it, or which quote you choose to go by, our sense of "home" is a powerful one. As children home is (ideally) a safe haven - a place where we they can be themselves, and are protected and safe with parents and family. But, summer's here and parents may want to encourage their children to enjoy new experiences and new friends through giving them the opportunity to attend summer camp. For many children this will be their first longer-term sojourn away from home. As parents it's important to have a discussion around what this will be like, and to discuss possible ways that they might make their experience feel safe, cozy and more like home. It's an important step in teaching children that a sense of home can come from the inside, as well as from the home they live in.One way of encouraging a sense of home while away at camp is to bring some familiar and meaningful items that your children can set up around their bunk space. Posters, pictures, magazines clipping are some ideas to start with. Maybe your children have a particular family photo that they're fond of. You could have it blown up and laminated, so they can tack it above their bed. Another practical way of helping your children feel safe away from home is to encourage them to set up a safe bunk. Make sure they have a flash light, and a back-up. Send them with a personal first aid kit that they can keep near their bunk and show them all its contents and their applications. If the camp has top and bottom bunks, you might want to discuss with your child in advance, which they would prefer. Sleeping up high can be daunting if children have never experienced this before. Prearrange with the camp to find a bunk suitable to your child's preferences.You'll definitely want to discuss homesickness, and strategies to deal with it. You might try discussing these coping strategies and then writing them down with your child in a special journal that they can refer to when away. Some suggestions might include:- Go see a camp counselor to talk about feelings of homesickness. Ensure your child that's what camp counselors are for and that they won't be weak for seeking help.- Encourage them to write a letter home and talk about all their feelings in that letter. Let it all out. (you can send your child with pre-stamped, pre-addressed envelopes to make letter writing easier for them.)- Suggest that they think about the activities they enjoy most at the camp- and go do them! Teach them that by thinking positively, they'll soon forget their homesickness.Another great way to prepare your child for this time away from home is to set up some practice week-ends away from home. When your child returns from these excursions, discuss with them how their time was. Encourage them to keep a journal about these times, and to record any positive or negative feelings they had about being away from home. Be thorough about researching the particular camp your child will be attending. Go through web sites, orientation booklets, talk to friends who attended the camp previously, look at photos and if possible you might make a trip to check out the site before the actual camp dates.A calendar, with the dates away highlighted, might be a good thing to give your child when they are away. This way they can see visually that their time away from home is not an eternity, but is a discrete and measurable amount of time. Avoid making a "pick-up deal" with your child, as this might only encourage them to bail out from the experience. As hard as it can be for both child and parent, they will learn very important life lessons being away from home and in this stimulating environment. To offer such a bail out situation also diminishes your faith in their ability to follow through and work through their emotions and fears. Essentially you undermine all the work you've done together to prepare for this experience.Work together with your child, and they'll gradually learn that, "home is where the heart is" - wherever they may be.
>>By Kevin Koitz
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Camping Necessities
Be Prepared for Your Next Camping TripWhen going on a camping trip, it is best to come completely prepared. Often times, when you are camping, you are pretty far away from the nearest gas station or large grocery chain – both are places that we have become dependent on in today’s society. Whether you are camping with the family in your RV or if you are hiking the wilderness alone, there are some basic necessities that you should not leave behind. RV Camping NecessitiesWhen you and your family go RV camping, you have the luxury of a large automobile with plenty of storage space for food, beverages and other camping equipment. You will also want to make sure that you have plenty of emergency equipment in case your RV runs into a bit of bad luck on the road. Spare tires, fully charged flashlights and cell phones as well as items such as snow chains or engine coolant, depending on which season you are traveling during. When travelling across the country in an RV, you have enough room to house items such as a microwave or a miniature refrigerator, so you can plan your meals accordingly. Most of the places you stop at during your vacation will have all the amenities you could ever need such as electricity, sewer, or gasoline; however, it is still important to verify that these amenities will be available to you before you plan the stops on your RV camping trip. Tent Camping NecessitiesIf you are planning on taking your family tent camping, the situation changes dramatically. First and foremost, you need a place to sleep so make sure that the tent is packed or it will be a cold and miserable weekend! You must also consider how to store and transport your food for the trip. In most cases, a large ice chest will do quite wonderfully. Many camp sites that you visit will have basic amenities such as restrooms and showers, which make camping in a tent easier and more accessible for everyone. In some cases, it may be necessary to bring items such as folding chairs and a table so that you will have a place to eat. Although most camp sites you find will come equipped with picnic benches and fire pits, if you aren’t staying in a state park or private campground, these amenities might not be available to you. Lastly, there are some adventurous souls who are willing to forego any kind of amenity and completely “rough it.” For these explorers, items such as canteens and tin plates for cooking and eating become almost a luxury as much as a necessity. No matter where you decide to camp, it will inevitably become much colder at night. Therefore it is important to prepare, not only with a high quality sleeping bag, but with thermal garments and quality fire starting equipment. Although great care and experience are needed in starting one, a campfire is the ultimate survival tool when you are alone in the wilderness, so make sure that you have the necessary equipment to start one. Not only is it a source of heat and useful for cooking and purifying water, it will also be extremely effective at warding off some of the larger animals during the wee hours of the night. Successful CampingAs you can see, the necessities for enjoying yourself and staying safe on your next camping trip vary depending on whether you are staying in your RV, taking the family out for some tent camping, or exploring the wilderness on your own. Although many more items might be necessary depending on the location of your camping trip and the time of year in which you go, the items discussed above will give you a better understanding on how to prepare for your next camping vacation.
>>By Cory Howell [ 08/12/2008 ]
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Online Travel Information
Internet has become a marvelous source for getting information on any and every thing. Travel is no different. Today, if someone wants to plan their holidays, they just have to sit in front of computer comfortably for few minutes and the entire job is done. Not only the travel information is easily available, but holiday packages and tickets for either airplane or train can be booked. All you need to do is to decide the destination where you want to travel and then search their ways and routes online. You can also have the idea of the number of places to go at the place where you are going such as temples, monuments, buildings, museums etc. On watching the pictures of the famous places where you are planning to go, it becomes easier to understand the location scenario through their glimpse. You can also thing of hiring a travel agent from a reputed travel agency online, so that you might not miss any spot of the destination. But this should be taken care that a travel agent or guide must be hired from some reputed organization so that they don’t mislead you, if you have no idea about the place where you are planning to go.Searching online for the traveling information is safe because it gives you the correct idea of the location and people out there. They tell you specialties of places and give you the reason to visit that place. For further travel assistance, you can also search for a travel packages, which will take care of everything such as flight and hotel booking, sight seeing, schedule planning etc They can also take care of the food and all, depending on the package. Hence, giving you a feeling of security and tension-free mind, you can just pack your bags and get ready for a beautiful holiday.Thus, internet is a complete solution to give you a luxurious and memorable travel experience at peace of mind.
>>By Editor 123 [ 09/01/2009 ]
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Steps on How to Avoid Air Travel Psychological Fatigue
My girl friend fears to move travel for long distances be it by air or vehicles. It is not her alone but many people have that fear before boarding their next plane. What could be the reason?Is it hereditary, is it a natural fear? Why it is that some don’t fall sick after or before a long journey on a plane. On this article get to know how to solve some problems concerned with long journey psychological problems.Others call it aviophobia I don’t know how you will call it. But it was in 1988 when I hard a long distance from my homeland to our capital city. I moved with older women and men who were not comfortable with this journey. I can remember o good number of them vomited in vehicle. By then I was still young but kept thinking why others didn’t vomit including me.It was in 2003 on my journey from London to New York when I experienced another incidence of such where another woman vomited on our journey and I felt that, may be there was a certain type of people who fear to travel.On my world travels I have come to know that naturally, there are people who have that fear in their body and I have managed to gather enough information on how one can avoid this to happen again in future.I ‘m sure if you are going to a long journey, you have to plan it. And if your last journey was not good, you should have known the cause. The best way is to make sure to avoid the mistakes you made before the journey.I remember asking the lady what happened I moved with in1988, and I can remember well when she said that the air from the exhaust pipe was not good and made her vomit. But what amused me was that she never wanted to go to next clinic for medical care. How about this one in the air conditioned plane from London to New York?You will not have committed any crime but if you can avoid it, it can save you a great degree of humiliation.There are some tablets that can stop this to happen in the course of your journey. But does that solve the future problem?The best alternative is to visit a psychotherapist near you. These people are experience in distinguished fields and can help you. There are also machines which are made for such people to make a person ready for that journey. Some of us were luck to be born in middle class home where we got the chance to move in a vehicle at an early age and therefore don’t have that phobia. But what I have come to know of recent is that, those who fear normally are people who were not used to flying at an early age or they have a history of having lost somebody in a related accident and therefore fear to travel. But other wise no one should fear to travel by plane as they are the best means of transport
>>By Twinomugisha Charles [ 05/03/2009 ]
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