Progressive Day Camp

Summer camp is a win-win situation for families. It gives parents the child-free time they need to work or care for younger children, while keeping their older children occupied with fun activities.

The only disadvantage to summer camps is the cost. According to the American Camp Association, the average cost of a week of day camp is $314.

If you are looking for a more budget-friendly way to achieve the same benefits that a day camp provides, you might want to consider a progressive neighborhood camp. Other than camp supplies, the only cost for a neighborhood progressive camp is an hour of the parents’ time each day.

The parent counselors take turns providing one hour of structured entertainment in the form of games, crafts and other activities. When the hour is up, the children move on to the next house, leaving that parent the rest of the time to do their work child-free.

How it works: Choose the number of participants based on the number of children and their ages. The number of families, not the number of children, will determine how long your camp is each day. For example, if you have five families, your camp is five hours long. If you have a large number of children, you can enlist the help of a babysitter who will move from house to house with the children and act as an assistant camp counselor.

Planning: Choose the activities that you will include in your camp. Some suggestions include outdoor games, arts and crafts, music and dance, gardening, cooking and baking, science projects, story time and of course, lunchtime. Other options include teaching a new skill, such as sewing on a button or inviting a guest speaker. If your group is small, you might also consider a short field trip.

Parent camp counselors can choose which activity they host based on their skill level or tolerance for mess. Using a daily theme for your camp will help tie the activities together. Theme ideas include pajama day, beach party, superhero, patriotic, decades day, sports jersey day and Wacky Wednesday. Work as a group to determine a budget after factoring the number of children and the supplies needed for each activity.

Keep costs down: You can find craft supplies at OrientalTrading.com, which is a gold mine for inexpensive kids’ crafts and game prizes. Instead of serving lunch for a large group, consider having each child bring a sack lunch.

If you plan to send the kids home with a trinket each day, consider something reusable, like relay race water bottles from the dollar store. Other inexpensive ideas include a DVD of the music video they made or an egg carton full of the seedlings they planted.

Putting it all together: All the kids meet at the first house at the start of camp. The camp counselor should be prepared to start the activity as soon as the kids arrive. Each session should end five minutes before the next hour so the counselor (or babysitter) can walk the kids to the next house. At the end of the day, each parent will pick up their child at the last house.

Capture the memories: Take a lot of pictures of the kids at camp. You can find inexpensive photo booth printouts online and at Etsy, or snap candid shots of the kids in action. Make a slide show of the photos to share with the campers on the last day and give everyone a copy.

The best thing about a progressive day camp is that you can host a weekly camp or just one day each week for the whole summer. Unlike other camps, these parents will be a part of their child’s camp experience, an advantage that is priceless.

Pam Molnar is a freelance writer and mother of three.

Let’s Get You Started

Here’s a great example of a progressive camp:

Today’s Theme: Wild West

• 9:00-10:00 a.m., Arts and crafts, first house

Make marshmallow shooters

• 10:00-11:00 a.m., Cooking and baking, second house

Making homemade ice cream

• 11:00-noon, Outdoor games, third house

Playing horseshoes, water gun shooting gallery, rope the horse, sack races

• Noon-1 p.m., Lunch and story time, fourth house

Serving wagon wheel pasta and pigs in a blanket plus homemade ice cream

(Reading: Cowboy Camp by Tammi Sauer)

• 1:00-2:00 p.m., Music and dance time, fifth house

Learning to square dance