How Scanned Letters Work - New Camper Blog Series
Hello new camper parents! We are excited for another week of our New Camper Blog series! If you are just now joining us, make sure to check out our past posts for this year; we hope you’ll join us each Tuesday as we deep-dive into a specific Greystone topic geared to our first-time campers.
This week, we’re jumping into a fun topic that I know you’ll love learning about – scanned letters. Before we explain about scanned letters, let’s talk about communication at camp in general.
Connecting with your daughter during the summer
A few years ago, we shared a New Camper Blog about Communication at camp, and it is a great place to start. You can read about all of the different ways that you can communicate with your daughter and also with camp (the only difference since we wrote that blog is that we don’t use Remind texts regularly). This summer, we hope you’ll enjoy the lost art of letter writing (which we LOVE at camp!) by sending snail mail to your daughter throughout her time at Greystone.
Because letters can take some time to make it through the postal system, we want you rest at ease with a quicker way to hear from your daughter. In comes…scanned letters!
So, what is a scanned letter? Scanned letters are letters your daughter will write to you while she is at camp that we will then scan into your Greystone Account for you to read. Parents love this scanned letter option, and we hope you’ll enjoy hearing from your daughter quickly and easily each week.
How do scanned letters work? Here are the details!
Scanned Letter details:
- A letter after arrival: Scanned letters are uploaded into your account weekly. The first letter will show up within 3 days after your camper’s arrival, and we will email you once this letter is “live” in your Greystone Account. After that, girls write a letter each Sunday, and these are “live” to read by the following Tuesday.
- View scanned letters in your Forms: You will view scanned letters in the Forms section of your Greystone Account. How you read them will depend on if you are viewing them on our new Campanion app (very easy!) or on a computer. When we send details about your first scanned letter being “live”, we will also send details on how to view these letters. In the meantime, you can find more details about downloading the Campanion app on our main Parents page.
- Enjoy a letter each week: The nice thing about scanned letters is that you’re guaranteed to hear from your daughter weekly – that’s great! Some girls write every day, but other girls don’t write much at all, so many parents are thrilled to get a weekly letter. However, just know…we don’t force the girls to write anything specific, so for some of you, your camper may only write one or two sentences, or even draw you a picture. We always say that something is better than nothing!
- How to respond to scanned letters: You won’t be able to scan a letter back to your daughter, but you can shoot her an email, which lets you respond back to her quickly. It’s a great way to write her back right away so she can hear from you.
We hope you enjoy reading these scanned letters from your daughter, and if you ever have any questions about them, you can always contact us. We’re happy to help!
Other ways to connect: photos and videos
Since we are talking about communicating with your daughter, it’s a great time to remind you about our photo and video options. Photos and videos are a fun way to get a better feel for camp-life.
For Photos, check out all of our information on how to view pictures this year. Because we post so many photos each day (typically over 1000!), we also offer two different options for photo facial recognition, which many of our parents take advantage of during the summer. Check out the details on our Photos page to make sure you are signed up and ready to go!
And, don’t forget to remind your daughter to jump in front of the camp camera; we have cameras all around camp, but sometimes girls are more hesitant to have their picture taken. Remind your camper that you want to see her in pictures!
We also post weekly videos of our campers during each session. You can see these on our Greystone Vimeo page, or you can check them out in our Campanion app or our Waldo facial recognition app (details on both can be found with our Photo details). The videos are a great way to get a feel for camp during that specific week.
As always, if you have any questions, let us know. We will see you back next week for another New Camper Blog!