Offbeat summer camps for East Bay kids.

Every spring I brace myself for what I refer to as “the camp dance.” This is where I try to find summer camps for all three of my kids that (1) they will like, and (2) I can afford, and (3) don’t require me to be in three different places at the same time. (One week last summer, for reasons I won’t bother to explain because they don’t make sense, I had to be in Tilden Park at 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 3 p.m., and in El Cerrito at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. That, my friends, was a thoroughly sucky week.)

Fortunately, living in the East Bay means that there are lots of camps to choose from, ranging from the big and traditional to the little and funky. Every year there are new ones, including some so small and obscure that even your closest friends may not tell you about them because there are so few openings. Yes, the camp dance is a competitive event.

But never fear. I am here to make you a camp dance winner by rooting out a fresh crop of offbeat camps that you may not have heard of, but that your kids will be totally into. Several accept kids as young as 5; many offer teen programs. This is great, because left to their own devices some teens won’t get out of bed until 2 p.m., at which point they will proceed to send 50 thousand text messages and ditz around endlessly on Facebook. (Not your teen, of course, but some.) Send your kids to camp, on the other hand, and for a mere $200-$350 a week (more or less) they may learn something useful—or at least come home in a good mood. Here are some unusual choices that can get the job done.

Summer balance: Kids at Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow in Mendocino County learn circus arts like trapeze, clowning, and how to ride a unicycle. Photo courtesy Camp Winnarainbow.

Outdoor education and old-world crafts

I’ve noticed a trend lately—there seems to be a growing number of kids’ camps and classes that teach old-world craftmanship skills. I don’t mean making lanyards or tie-dye; no, I’m talking blacksmithing. Homesteading. Wilderness survival. Foraging. Forging. Maybe even forging while foraging, who knows. I think it’s great for kids to learn this sort of stuff, because then, if there’s a natural disaster or apocalypse of some sort, they will know what to do. (Me, I’m still working on my suburban survival skills.)

Trackers, for example, is an outdoor education group that’s relatively new to the Bay Area, having started out in Oregon a few years ago. Trackers runs a variety of outdoors summer camps for kids ages 6-14 and also offers older teen camps and apprenticeships. Campers meet at the Berkeley Marina and travel to various East Bay parks. One Trackers day camp, “Little House: Wilders Homestead and Ranch,” lets kids immerse themselves in the Little House series of books and learn old-time skills such as identifying wild plants, making candles and soap, and whittling. For kids who are less Little House and more Lord of the Rings, there’s “Welcome to Middle Earth” and “Archery Apprenticeship, + Make a Bow.” (Don’t worry, there’s no Lord of the Flies camp.)

If your youngsters are interested in gardening or farming, check out the U.C. Botanical Garden’s Green Stuff Day Camp, where little nature bugs spend their days in the garden, learning all about plants—how they have evolved, how they look under a microscope, how to grow them, and how to use them for crafts and cooking. This all sounds really useful, especially if your child learns how to grow decent mint leaves, which are tasty in mojitos.

At the Point Reyes National Seashore Association’s sleepaway camps, kids learn about native plants and animals, go canoeing, and take nature hikes with trained naturalists. The program offers three- to five-night stays (depending on age, which ranges from 7-16) focused on environmental education. The camp serves fresh meals prepared with locally grown foods from places like Marin Organic Produce, the Straus Family Creamery, and Marin Sun Farm meats. And no, hungry parents aren’t allowed to show up at dinner time. I asked.

The Crucible, in downtown Oakland, offers a range of industrial arts and crafts programs, including a woodcarving class using hand tools (ages 8-11) and a blacksmithing class where older children (ages 12-17) learn to use a forge and anvil. Because honestly, young people today just don’t know how to pound out a decent horseshoe anymore, much less forge a deadly sword.

For the highly energetic

Perhaps you’ve got the kind of kid who really needs to move around to be happy. Sure, you could sign them up for baseball or soccer (yawn), but why not try something more daring?

Adventure Out offers rock climbing camps for ages 8 and up in Berkeley’s Remillard Park—and I’m talking about climbing actual rocks here, not the little plastic climbing walls now ubiquitous on play structures. If you’re willing to drive a little farther, Adventure Out also offers surfing camps in Pacifica. And if your kids enjoy climbing the walls indoors (so to speak), try El Cerrito’s Bridges Rock Gym or Berkeley Ironworks, both of which offer indoor climbing camps (some of the Ironworks camps include outdoor climbing).

To unleash your spawn’s inner Inigo Montoya, check out the Sport Fencing Center in Richmond. Their fencing camps cover strengthening and conditioning, footwork, blade work, and electronic bouting (in which stabbing someone merely results in a higher score—not gushing blood). This way, if kids do somehow manage to forge a sword, they’ll know what to do with it.

The Lake Merritt Rowing Club in Oakland offers low-cost ($79 per week) summer classes that teach 12- to 18-year-olds how to row as part of an eight-person crew. In my experience, this is a little like having eight people try to ride a bike together while holding 12-foot oars, slightly frustrating at first, but excellent for learning teamwork. Plus, teens can sing “I’m on a boat,” and mean it. And did you know that some colleges offer rowing scholarships? Just sayin’.

The Athletic Playground in Emeryville offers high-energy indoor camps where kids ages 5-12 can learn tricks straight out of Cirque du Soleil, like hanging from fabric ribbons suspended from the ceiling, making human pyramids, tumbling, and (my favorite) Parkour. If you haven’t heard of Parkour, it involves vaulting over random obstacles and running around a lot (Google it to see some amazing videos). I’m guessing most kids would like that since it’s pretty much what mine do at home all the time.

If the idea of letting someone else host the circus for a week or two appeals to you, send the kids to Camp Winnarainbow, a sleepaway camp for the circus arts. Here, they can learn trapeze, clowning, maskmaking, and other fun circus-y stuff. It’s $800 a week, but there’s a bonus: Winnarainbow is located three hours north of San Francisco, which is far enough away that you probably won’t even hear any noise.

For kids who like Glee

This year the city of El Cerrito is offering an opera camp that’s run by the folks from the Berkeley West Edge Opera, which recently started using the El Cerrito High School theater as its home theater. (The camp is open to non–El Cerrito residents for a slightly higher fee.) Campers will learn all the skills needed to be in an opera, like scenework, improvisation, movement, and singing—and will re-create an opera themselves. Tell your kids it’s like Glee, but with more trilling and no psychotic cheerleading coach.

Another option for boys who like to sing is the Pacific Boychoir Camp in Oakland. Pacific Boychoir is well known for its excellent all-boy choirs; they also run an after-school choir program and an all-boy academy. Campers learn singing techniques and music theory in the morning and go on outings in the afternoon. The program is for boys ages 5-9, when their voices are still high and sweet, before they turn into teens and get all manly-sounding and hairy.

For girls, try the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp in Oakland. Girls ages 8-18 form a band, choose an instrument to learn (the list includes typical rock band instruments, along with voice and DJ turntables), write some songs, and get to jammin’. No experience necessary; emo attitude optional.

Brain-building but not boring

There are a number of excellent academic camps in the East Bay; in fact, you can hardly turn around without running into someone who wants to enrich the heck out of your child. The trick is to find a camp where kids can learn stuff without feeling like they’re stuck in school all summer.

One new option is QuantumCamp in Berkeley, which offers a range of math and science camps for ages 12 and up. What’s different about QuantumCamp? They emphasize a “hands-on, no-textbook” approach—campers derive results themselves rather than just trying to stay awake while reading about them. Choices include (among others) the eponymous “QuantumCamp”—where kids re-create some of the landmark experiments that led to the theory of quantum physics—“Algebra in Motion,” “ChemCamp,” and “Special Relativity.” At about six hundred bucks a week, they’re not cheap—but if your little darling ends up kicking butt in science it may be well worth the price.

For younger children, Play-Well TEKnologies offers Lego-building camps in Alameda, Albany, and El Cerrito. (The “TEK” stands for “Teaching Engineering to Kids,” in case you’re wondering.) Campers explore architectural design and structural stability by building all kinds of Lego creations—like cities, bridges, and catapults. More advanced classes use little motors and electronic components to create motorized robots, race cars, conveyor belts, and other gadgets. Apparently there’s nothing you can’t build with Legos; send your kids here for a couple of weeks and they’ll probably be able to build that home addition you’ve always wanted.

Why can’t we all just get along

Perhaps you’ve had enough of the madness—both outside of your home and in it. Perhaps you’re in the mood for a little peace, love, and understanding. Then send your kids to the Berkeley Peace Camp, a nonprofit organization that offers week-long summer day camp programs. At Peace Camp, kids ages 6-12 sing peace-related songs, do peace-related skits, and learn about how to get along with others—possibly even with siblings. This year’s East Bay camp is a Music Peace Camp that focuses on learning about music with a peace theme, so they can kumbayah their little hearts out.

Another option is the Role Play Workshop in Piedmont, where kids 10 and up play an interactive storytelling game called Abantey (invented by the camp’s founder, Becky Thomas). Abantey is a little like other role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons; players take on the roles of specific characters and work together to solve missions, which in this case, are defined and facilitated by an adult “game master.” While campers are busily pursuing their missions, they are learning group problem-solving skills, along with a little math and science.

Then there’s the Belladonna Fairy Camp for Girls, a two-week camp held in North Berkeley that lets girls ages 6-10 get their fairy on while learning about feminism, spiritualism, and “magical eco-arts.” All I can say is, thank goodness someone is upholding Berkeley’s reputation. Plus, the camp involves wearing fairy wings and tutus and what’s not to like about that?

Other Resources

If none of these camps do the trick, there are a couple of great online resources for finding other East Bay summer camps in our resource box on page 16. Good luck on your camp dance this year. May it be short and painless and not involve any weird logistical contortions, because those can be annoying. Trust me, I know.

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Jennifer Eyre White lives with her husband and three kids in the East Bay. She runs the popular website HavingThreeKids.com—for those who have three, want three, or fear three. Her little gift book, The Practical Napper: Tips, Facts, and Quotes for the Avidly Recumbent, will be published by Andrews McMeel in early June (just in time for recumbently inclined dads and grads).

Off the Beaten Trail

Resources at the bottom of the article and in the digital edition.