Working at camp all year, I have the privilege of saying that I play for a living. Yes, I do spend time in an office, and the work here at camp has a farther reaching and deeper impact than simply being fun. However, fun is the primary vehicle for the impact that we make, and as a result I am evaluated on my ability to have fun.

This past week, many of us here at camp attended the American Camping Association Tri-State Camping Conference in Atlantic City. The convention provides three full days of workshops geared to all levels of camping professionals. Some of these workshops are meant to help you balance your budget, others are geared towards training and developing camp counselors, and there are many that focus on various other programs at camp. Among all of these workshops there are a few that are simply about having more fun at camp. In these workshops you get to learn new games by playing them with others. It is a great way to spend your day. While many of these group games and icebreakers are meant to be implemented as a part of a teambuilding program or introduction to camp, one workshop really stuck out because it reminded us how to have F.U.N.N.

F.U.N.N. is an acronym that means Functional Understanding Not Necessary. Our presenter was Karl Rohnke, one of the great pioneers of adventure education who is a founding member of Project Adventure and High 5 Adventure Learning center, two of the biggest names in adventure education. Our group of 30 got to spend four hours in a conference room with Karl playing tons of games and completing challenges that served no purpose but to “give it a shot” and to have fun whether we succeeded or not without much thought going into the process. Karl has written over 15 books filled with these games. My favorite examples of the ones he shared with us are:

  • Find a bungee cord or something with tens of feet of stretch to it (preferably one that does not have anything hard attached to the ends) and stretch it with a partner as far as you can. See if you can let go of the cord at the same time so that both ends of the cord land in between you and your partner.
  • Try and fit as many wine corks or chess pieces into your hand as you can so that you can turn your hand over and have none fall out. Try to stack as many end to end as you can and then lift them together.
  • Get a crowd of people in an enclosed place. Pick partners. Have one person close their eyes and the other person hide. When the person who is looking opens their eyes, they need to close one eye and make a telescope with their hand over their open eye. The “Cyclops” then tries to tag their partner (both walking). When tagged, they switch roles after a count of 3 where the new Cyclops has their eyes closed.
  • Get another person and try and support one another from seated into a standing position. Get a group or a pair and try to get so that only the groups’ hands within 3 inches of the ground for 5 seconds.
  • Crumple paper into a ball and throw it at each other. Last man standing wins.

These are but a few examples. It really expanded my mind because as adults we have a tendency to over think fun. Sometimes though it really is just simple fun, or should I say F.U.N.N.?