SUMMER CAMP GUIDE

 

Day camps in the Berkeley/Oakland/Albany/El Cerrito area

including spring and winter break camp offerings

 

Residential camps in Northern California (& beyond)

plus some internships, family camps & international programs

 

by Tom Lent

 

Introduction to the Guide

This guide covers over 180 camps, including day camps in the Berkeley/Oakland/Albany/El Cerrito area, (concentrating on Berkeley and the northern end of Oakland, but see below for info on camps in the other side of the hills) and overnight resident camps, internships and family camps from around Northern California - with a few from farther afield of particularly unique interest to California kids beginning to sneak in, including international programs.

I generally have not listed programs that are an hour or less per day or run for less than two weeks (except residential camps and spring and winter break offerings). The majority of the camps are for primary school age children, but I have expanded to include more middle and high school age camps as they have come to me.

A note about reviews: Reviews are based upon surveys I did of parents at Berkwood Hedge School from their experiences during the summers of 1995 through 2001 so are reasonably impartial. I have gotten many requests to publish reviews for other camps, but as my son has grown up I am no longer in a community of parents from whom I can easily get reviews and I do not have the time to collect a good sample of reviews in another nor to do a fair job of evaluating impartiality. Hence I have chosen not to add any further reviews to the listings.

GETTING MORE INFORMATION: This listing is not comprehensive. There are more camps out there, both general and specialty (arts, music, drama, science, sports). Below are listed a number of useful resources for your exploration:

AAUW Summer Program Information Fair Is a way to get a wealth of information in person about these and other camps in a few hours. It is free and held in March each year in the Scottish Rite Center at 1547 Lakeside in Oakland near Lake Merritt. In 2008, the fair was Sunday, March 9 from 1-4:30pm. www.aauw-op.com 287-9855

American Camping Association (925-933-0666 www.acanorcal.org) Check out the Norcal section for more camps on the east side of the hills, San Francisco and other parts of Northern California as well as listings for other camp information fairs

Bay Area Kid Fun (http://www.bayareakidfun.com/pages/campsgeneral.html) covers the greater Bay area with camps and other kid fun listed by city.

Bay Area Parent (http://sanfrancisco.parenthood.com/) has lists of Bay area camps in its monthly magazines (one for the East Bay and one for San Francisco) – usually in the late spring editions (May, June). You will find more listings than I carry for Danville and elsewhere east of the hills. There are also links to other Parenthood.com camp guides for San Francisco & Peninsula, Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the country (click on "local sites"). To get to the magazine archives to find these lists, click on “current issues”.

Berkeley Information Network (http://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/) Click on “Berkeley Information Network” or click here to go direct to the BIN day camps listings. Over 100 day camps are listed here (along with many other valuable community resources compiled by the Berkeley Public Library). Use the “limit this search” option to narrow the list down by a keyword such as “soccer” or “music”.

Berkeley Parents Network Has more parent reviews on these camps and information about other camps I have not listed: http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/summer/.

CampPlanIt.net (http://www.campplanit.net/CampPlanItLocation.aspx) covers camps in the entire Bay area and includes search tools to help parents select camps by type and location, calendar functions to help find camp schedules that fit into their summer schedules and online registration options for some camps.

East Bay Regional Parks (http://www.ebparks.org/activities/daycamps) Provides a complete listing of all the camps hosted in the parks, plus a “campership” program to help low income families afford the cost.

goCityKids (http://gocitykids.parentsconnect.com/browse/topcat.jsp?area=199&category=79) has a good online listing of day camps and other family friendly stuff by neighborhood through out San Francisco and in Marin, the Peninsula and East Bay.

Parent Press (http://www.parentspress.com/) publishes extensive camp listings for the whole Bay Area in the March and April editions of their monthly news magazine. Last I checked it was not available on line. You will have to search out the print edition at YMCAs kids stores and other such family friendly spots in the area.

NATIONAL: More camp listings in the Bay area and the rest of the country can be found at  www.findcamps.com and http://www.summer-daycamps.com/ and  http://gocitykids.parentsconnect.com/choose/

What to do the rest of the time?. How do you find cool things to do in the Bay Area the rest of the time when they are not in camp? The Berkeley Parent’s Network (see link above) gathers parent recommendations and discussions and Bay Area Parent (also above) provides calendar listings. And don’t miss Kiddie Koncierge (www.kiddiekoncierge) another parent labor of love with lots of recommendations for fun kid friendly activities - and some good kid travel info and stuff for parental escapes as well. 

Act early. Camps are filling faster every year. While many camps don't publish their schedules until late February or March, and some have room in some sessions right into the summer, others fill as early as mid February (Kids n' Clay, LHS, the Cal Sports & Science combo and Skateboard camp, Ha-Ha-This Away and some residential camps for example).

Act now if you want one of these programs.

Some of the fee & date information here dates back to the summers of 2002 and 2003, the last years that I attempted the increasingly heroic task of comprehensively updating the entire list. The list has grown and my time has shrunk for updating this site now and I am no longer able to gather and incorporate reviews or update fee, schedule and program information. The parenthetic number at the end of each listing (02) will tell you when I last updated it.  Luckily most camps now have web addresses that are linked here so you can check yourself for updates that I may not yet have learned about or had a chance to incorporate here.

This has been a labor of love, not a profitable enterprise, started when I was first trying to wade through the confusion to figure out where to send my son after his kindergarten year. Once I had gathered a bunch of information, I figured I should share it. I do the best I can, but no guarantees about the accuracy information are made. I have less time now to keep up with it than I used to but hope it still is helpful to you.

Read about Day Camps

Read about Overnight Resident Camps

Return to Tom Lent’s Information Center

 

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Comments? E-mail them to me: tominfo@igc.org