ACA Home Forums Color War Facts!

Hey all, I love the color war idea, and for the first time at our camp I think I am going to try it as an activity.

However, my question is how do your color wars go down?

I know that the beginning of color war is a big deal, but could some one run me though the entire process from the beginning to the end.

Thank you so much!

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a colour war?

Color war is an activity usually done at a camp that has long sessions. The camp is divided into two teams (two different colors) and the teams compete, usually for a week or so. Then points are added up, and there is a winner. At some camps (like mine) it's usually a big deal.

Color war is a lot of fun. I didn't think I would enjoy it, but I really do. The oldest campers do most of the planning, and they have already started. Not only does each team have a color at my camp, they also have a theme. The themes are usually movies or tv shows or something like that. The campers plan all sorts of things around their theme, including cheers and songs, they plan something called "sing" in which each team does little skits based on their themes. "Sing" is based in tradition, and every camper is involved in the process. Usually the team who wins "sing" wins color war.

The break is very important, not even the oldest campers know exactly when color war is going to break. The returning staff is usually in charge of break and clues. Usually a week or so before color war breaks, we plan clues (of when it's going to break) and we plan a couple of fake breaks. Last summer the break was "National Treasure." We set up a whole mystery thing and we even made an active volcano out of our climbing tower! It was really fun and cool, the campers had no idea when or how it was going to break.

Then the morning after the break, the campers find out their teams and start to wear their colors. Games start based on age groups. There is also a lot of time built in to help the younger campers learn the cheers and songs for "sing." Games include:
Basketball, Ultimate Frisbee, Softball, Volleyball, Soccer, Kickball, Swim Meet, Apache Relay, Bucket Brigade, All Camp Line Up, Chaos, Cheer competition... and many more.
Everything is based on age group. So the gold upper juniors will play the green upper juniors and so on. A younger camper will not compete against an older one.

These activities last for about a week... the last week of camp. It all ends with "sing" and the final fight. The final fight is a group of returning staff "fighting" and the winner of that, shows who wins color war.

That sounds really confusing... but it's a lot of fun. As I said, color war is based in tradition. So, if you're starting color war for the first time at your camp, you'll be starting one awesome tradition!

- Teenster

It sounds Awesome!! A flour bomb fight would be good, messy, but fun

I love color war!

There are a lot of differences from camp to camp in exactly how it works, but it's usually highly spirited with lots of singing and cheering.

At Merriwood, there was a lot of preparation for the break by the counselors and the administrators did a lot of prep for the event, but we didn't have themes and the kids didn't do anything until color war started.

It was simply Green verse Grey in competition. The kids would wear their colors and sit with their team at meals. The teams would enter together doing traditional cheers. I love that two meals they would do their own cheers, but at lunch, each team would enter with a song or cheer that was for the opposite color, and do it with no less enthusiasm. Skits about funny things at camp, three songs about camp, and a banner would be the big deals for the last night. The dining hall is decorated with the winning banners from every year. They all have some saying about camp and usually friendship. They are amazing works of art created over the course of four days with felt.

The day camp I worked at had a theme each summer. It was a lot of fun, but I kind of like just having camp in general as a theme.

So, I just wanted to bump up an old thread, as for our first session of camp is going to be Color War.

It's going to be based around the fourth of July, and the campers are going to be broken up into either Red, Blue or White depending on their age (eg. grades 9-12 are blue, 6-8 are red and 4-6 are white).

I'm still tryin to wrap my head around Color Wars; I'm not completely understanding what people mean when referring to "the break".

But from Googling it, I am reading that a lot of camps do things like baseball games, capture the flag etc. to earn points for their color.

I want to know though how it could be held for the way my age groups are set up - as obviously it wouldnt be fair for the White team (4-6th grades) to play baseball against the Bue team who are 9-12 graders and obviously older and more skilled.

Any suggestion would be hugely appreciated!

My camp was big-- almost 300 campers so we broke it up into 4 teams and we called it camp olympics and we basically did everything listed and we had a camp theme

I think that if you are going to have the campers divided by age group, you're going to have to make some modifications to make it fair - like if you wanted to do a baseball game, fine, but the older group has to bat or throw with their non-dominant hand or something similar. You could do a basketball shoot-out with different distances for different age groups. If you wanted to do flag football, give the younger kids one shorter flag each, and the older kids several longer ones.

The first camp that I worked at had staff events during color war, and the campers loved watching them (and got points for cheering for their staff members.) You could try to do the events that would be more uneven with staff - though the campers are different ages, the staff members from team to team would presumably be more evenly matched.

Something like a cardboard boat competition could be pretty even. Yes, the older kids might have better engineering ideas, but they also are going to have to float a larger person in their boat than the younger ones.

Another idea would be to not necessarily avoid points based on ranking the groups, but on how well they do individually. Suppose that one of your activities is to make a team banner. Instead of giving an 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and assigning points based on that, you could tell the judges that the activity is worth up to 10 points, and they can give any amount of points to each of the groups - so all groups could potentially get ten points.

Relay races with a variety of activities work well too. My brain is a little too fried right now to come up with a ton of ideas, but you can pretty easily create a mix of activities where different ages of campers have advantages. An older kid might beat the younger kids in a straight footrace, but the younger kids might be better at a wheelbarrow race, for example - if you put a mix of different events in the relay, you can even it out.

Color war break is basically a theatrical production put on by the staff. It's a pretty big deal at my camp, and usually involves lots of fire works. The break also usually has a theme. Here is an example of what my camp did last summer.

Our break theme was Twilight. We left clues to the campers all throughout the summer. The clues really don't mean a lot, but the kids love to try and find them. We would have counselors dress as Edward and Jacob, and we even had a Bella. They would enter the dining hall at weird times. Most of the clues had to do with the fact that warewolves and vampires don't like each other. But, the final break had the two groups working together to get the camp spirit back from the Voltori. Then the lighting of the G & G and fireworks to offically start color war.

It's so big at my camp. The oldest campers plan most of the color war events, they start working on it in March, and then throughout most of the spring. The staff helps to lead a lot of the games, and I still do the scheduling. But, I have to work with the campers to plan everything. We have age group events and also some events where the entire camp is involoved. Color war is a lot of fun, and it really shows our camp's spirit.

- Teenster

wow, that's really cool Teenster. I've never been involved in any sort of co.or war like you guys describe on here. Part of it I think has to do with only having 1 week sessions for the kids and then who knows the other reasons because I don't remember even doing a smaller version of color war.

I always thought Color War sounded like fun... We've never done it, though we have various other competitions (lasting less than a day)!

We would have fights about the theme