San Francisco Summer Camps

Over 100 camps will be at the Marin Camp Fair on Saturday, March 9, 2013.  And ActivityHero will be there too!  Come by and say hello!

This is a great opportunity to talk with many camps and hear what’s special about them.  Browse through at your leisure, pick up brochures and explore the summer opportunities available.  In addition, several of the most popular residential (sleep-away) camps will also be on hand to showcase their offerings.  The Marin Camp Fair is a community event managed by the Dominican University Athletic Department and Camp Doodles as a service to Marin County families and camps.

As the fair will be held inside the large gymnasium, we’ll be there rain or shine.

Date & Time:
Saturday, March 9, 2013 from 11:00am – 2:00pm (pizza lunch!)

Location:
Dominican University of California, Conlan Center gymnasium (1475 Grand Ave San Rafael, CA 94901)

Parent Details:
Children welcome. Pizza lunch & snacks.

Kid / Camper Details:
Get ready for fun! Bounce house & delicious pizza, popcorn & snacks.  Older campers (middle & high school) are also welcome to partake in these activities and might find their interest learning about the great summer options that exist for them, both academic & recreational.

More info at http://www.marincampfair.com/

The Outside Adventure Kids Multi-Sport Skills Day Camp offers fun outdoor pursuits each day with an emphasis on developing friendships, understanding risks and learning. We interviewed camp director Paul Dreyer about his beginnings and goals with the camp. 

Tell us a little about yourself and how you started the camp?

I have worked in the world of education for almost twenty years.   Born in South Africa, I moved to the United States as a small child, and have continued to seek out travel, adventure, and education ever since. A self-proclaimed “jack-of-all-trades,” I have been teaching, leading, and counseling groups in remote, outdoor settings around the world for over fifteen years.  Some of the schools and programs where I have directed efforts include the Watershed School, the Cottonwood Institute, High Mountain Institute, Where There Be Dragons, and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).   For the past ten years, I have been supporting Avid4 Adventure (Boulder, CO) in various ways.  This year, I began working full time with Avid4 Adventure to direct a new partnership with Outside Magazine and the opening of Outside Adventure Kids in the SF Bay Area.

Ten years ago, Avid4 Adventure was founded to help kids get outside and to promote a lifetime of healthy choices.  “KIDS, COME INSIDE, YOUR DINNER’S GETTING COLD!!” Twenty years ago, these words echoed across America millions of times each evening. Today, this phrase is much more seldom heard. Parents are concerned as they witness the increasingly sedentary lifestyle that kids are adopting. Mounting time in front of video games, computers, and TV, reduced PE in school and a drop in team sports participation are leading to a generation of kids that are less physically active and more overweight. Avid4 was founded to address this growing concern by delivering a spectrum of outdoor recreation non-competitive activities for kids and families that are designed to offer logistic relief for today’s busy parents.

With our new partnership and expansion into Marin, Outside Adventure Kids brings the same mission and goal – To get kids outside in order to combat increasing childhood obesity, increasing screen-time and decreasing physical activity, decreasing connection to nature.

Are there any special lessons or experiences you are trying to provide during the camp?

Of course, we want kids to have an incredibly FUN time in the outdoors.  We want kids to truly enjoy climbing and hiking and biking and paddling so they will want to keep getting outside, doing more of all of those activities – with their friends and with their families.  And, we also overlay all of those fun, adventure sports with an incredibly intentional educational progression.  For 7-9 year olds, our focus is on confidence.  For 10-12 year olds, our focus is on teamwork.  For younger kids, we focus on discovery and engagement, and with teenagers, we focus on leadership development.  Throughout our progression, we try to develop long-lasting grit and gratitude.

Two other components of all OAK camps are: (1) Leave No Trace (LNT) outdoor ethics – Kids learn not only how to play in the outdoors, but also how to protect it; and (2) Judgment and decision-making skills – We precede activities with a discussion about potential risks and how to minimize or avoid them, thus encouraging participants to develop understanding and judgment. 

How did you choose to start your camp in Marin?  

We wanted to expand Avid4 Adventure out of Colorado.  After investigating various different regions we settled on Marin as the best first place to expand for a handful of reasons.  I think these are the top 3 reasons…. One, Marin has incredible recreational resources out it’s backdoor.  We are committed to giving kids real and true outdoor experiences and we try to limit how much we need to drive  to get to those activity locations.  Two, Marin, and the entire San Francisco area, has a population of people that generally value healthy living and outdoor lifestyles.  And three, we saw a niche here – although there are many camps and summer opportunities in the Bay Area, we did not see a camp providing the type of programming that we will be offering.

Anything else you’d like to add?

For over 15 years, my community has been based in Boulder, CO.  Now, I have begun to split time between Colorado and the Bay Area of San Francisco, and specifically Marin County.  I feel such gratitude to now be a part of two incredible communities.  I am so excited to more deeply become a part of this new community of mine.  One way I know that I will be able to do that is by sharing Outside Adventure Kids with the kids and families here.  I’m so excited to meet all of you.  See you outside!

_________________________________________________________

For more information about Outside Adventure Kids and to register for camp visit their listing on ActivityHero!

At Abantey: The Roleplay Workshop, the theme is “learning outside the box.” For over 20 years, Becky Thomas has been offering kids in the Oakland area an alternative way of learning educational and life skills through the role-playing game she designed. Learn more about how Becky got started with The Roleplay Workshop and what sets it apart from other after-school and summer programs:

Tell us a little about yourself and how you started the camp.

I studied sciences at the University of Michigan and completed five years of graduate work in Ecology and Systematics at San Francisco State University. I received teaching credentials from SFSU in Life Sciences, Psychology, and General and Physical Sciences. I train in martial arts and draw on my decades of reading science fiction and my love of film for inspiration.

I’ve found a way to meld one of my favorite hobbies (role play gaming) with my love of working with teens into a unique educational enrichment program. For over twenty three years I have owned and operated the Roleplay Workshop, providing programs that help kids (many of them with learning and social  challenges) develop problem-solving abilities, better social, and teamwork skills while having fun and using their imaginations.

Like many things, it started out in an unexpected manner. I was teaching a combined 6-8th grade class (ages 11-13), all subjects, at a very small private school in 1998. I had the students working on a project to ‘design a world’. We began with its structure (land masses, water), moved on to atmospherics (weather), and were looking ahead to designing cultures for each continent and their trade relationships. While the students were working on their class project, I used the time to begin design of a role playing game world and system.

My students ‘caught’ me.

They asked to play test the game. The school administration was supportive, so we play tested it a few times. The students got so excited about the game, that they talked to their parents, who approached me and asked me to run the game as a week-long summer day camp. I did. It was well received.

The next school year, I as asked to continue it as an after school activity. After three years, I was having much more fun working with the kids through the RPG, and felt I was having a bigger impact there than in the classroom. I quit teaching in 1993, and began running after school programs and summer programs full time.

Are there any special lessons or experiences you are trying to provide during the camp?

I believe that the best learning is learning that is fun. I believe that education does not have to be books, pen and paper or lectures; although there is a place for that type of learning/teaching. Some of the most important things that I’ve learned in my life, some of my ‘education highlights’, are from learning in a practical, hands on or interactive environment. I believe that we learn, are educated ALL the time, by many mediums.

I believe education and entertainment can be mixed and retain their separate value. For example science channels, discovery channel, role playing games, any games for that matter. A game does not need to have been designed to be educational to be educational. Examples include learning to use money in Monopoly, learning to count in card games, learning strategy and thinking ahead in strategy games.

What surprises or delights the kids most about your camp? What sets your camp apart from the rest?

Many students in my programs come to me later in their lives and talk about what they learned through my program and role playing game. Some of are things that are usually considered to be ‘educational’, such as statistics, ecology and physics. While other things are more amorphous, such as how to be a positive member of the global community, conflict resolution and communications skills, how to formulate a plan and how to take responsibility for decisions, good and bad.

Parents and students have also come to me and told me about how our program is more than just a ‘teaching place’. They say that the program provided a safe place (emotionally and physically). A place with adult mentors who are not teachers or parents (and all the limits that those roles impose), a place that imparted a sense of community.

For more information about The Roleplay Workshop and current class schedules check them out on ActivityHero!

Does it feel like you spend a LOT of time and money planning and sending kids to summer camps? Well, you do. Here is something we put together from the data we have on San Francisco parents and summer camps.

And, here’s some shameless horn-tooting: use our search & summer planning calendar tools to save time, and, check out our discounts page and our free week of camp to save some money! You can even sign up for our newsletter and get these discounts delivered to your inbox once a month!

And, it doesn’t stop there, we give you two sham-wows!!! ok, we don’t. But we do help you find after-school activities during the school year too.

We would love to hear how we can make this even easier. Please tell us!

Mid-winter Break, otherwise known as “Ski Week”, is almost here for many SF Bay Area schools, a mere eight weeks after the end of the regular winter break. Then there will be Spring Break coming up in March or April. While the kids are certainly thrilled, the plethora of breaks do create a challenge for parents who aren’t able to take additional time off from work to actually go skiing or take that trip to Disneyland.

Luckily, many local summer camps offer mid-winter and spring break options so the kids can have fun and adventure right near home. You’ll find many options on ActivityHero. Now is a great time to consider testing a camp out you’d like to try for the summer and start thinking about coordinating summer plans. Here are some great camps we’ve found:

In San Francisco:
Adventure Camps, San Francisco
Bricks 4 Kidz SF, San Francisco
Brainvyne, San Francisco
Secret Agent Squad, San Francisco

SF Peninsula/San Mateo County:
Aviation Camp, San Carlos – President’s Week & Spring Break Camps
Cool Coyote Kids Camp, Woodside – Spring Break Camp
Legarza Basketball, San Carlos – President’s Week Camp
Kidizens, Belmont – President’s Week/Ski Week & Spring Break Camps
Art-Smart Studios, San Mateo – President’s Week & Spring Break Camps

SF South Bay/Santa Clara County:
Hidden Villa Farm – Los Altos – Explorers Camp for President’s Day and Spring Break
Way To Go Programs-Los Altos – President’s Week/Ski Week Camp
Communication Academy, Cupertino -President’s Week/Ski Week Camp
MVLA with Coach Ken, Mountain View – President’s Week Soccer Camp

See more camps for President’s Day, Spring Break and other school holidays >>

Find more on ActivityHero and use the date search to find great camps for your school holiday.