For children from preschool through high school, our 2024 Summer Camps include imagination-filled Story Tables games, preschool camp, outdoor adventures, needle felting, music, math, sports, and more! Click on the register button below each offering to sign up for one or multiple camps.
For questions, please contact
Cassidy Linder
Summer Program Director
Through reflective practices of journaling, sit-spots in nature, mindful walks, listening to acoustic music, and experimenting with various creative artistic expressions, students will have the opportunity to get to know themselves more deeply. Led by sixth-grade teacher Mary Kelley, students will not only have the time and space for personal exploration but also for group inquiry. During this time, we will explore deep fundamental questions together that arise organically in a council-like setting, wherein the answer is less important than the questions themselves. Mornings will begin in nature, allowing students to ground themselves in their day, followed by group inquiry and exploration. Moving our bodies through yoga and walks to nearby places of beauty will be followed by time for free play. Each day will culminate in some sort of creative artistic expression, from painting with watercolors to folding origami to writing poetry.
Join fifth grade teacher Sage Danch and preschool teacher Emma Larkan for a week of high Sierra adventure, cold water plunges, growing confidence, and relationship-building. There are endless lakes, streams, gorges, canyons, rock formations, and meadows to explore. Nightly soaks in the surrounding hot springs will be the perfect way to end each day and prepare for the next.
Led by Oak Grove chef Julia and our fabulous kitchen team, each day will start with a cup of herbal tea and a gratitude circle. Outdoor morning activities will range from campus walks and hiking, cookie decorating, organized outdoor games and free time for creativity & movement. We will be visiting the playground, as well as the option to do nature scavenger hunts. Participants will be asked to bring their own lunch each day; a light afternoon snack will be provided. Afternoons will be filled with card and board games, movies, and arts and crafts like rock painting, paper art, hand sewing, and friendship bracelets. Participants can expect to take home handmade crafts daily.
Please submit all allergies or food restrictions at time of registration.
Join Oak Grove’s Dance Teacher, Cassidy Linder, for a fun week of yoga, dance, crafts, and more with our Yoga and Dance camp! Each morning will consist of students learning about yoga poses, meditation, mindfulness, then we will take a brain break with a daily craft & snack. Afterwards we will learn dance moves across the floor, and create a dance to be shown at the end of the week! Please wear comfortable clothing and come with water & a snack.
Led by Outdoor Education Teacher Paul Wachur, join us for an amazing, unique camp in our beautiful local backcountry. We will prepare on Monday and hike into our camp Tuesday morning. Location will be based on where creeks are still flowing, but it will be one of several awe-inspiring locations. During our time at our basecamp we will rest and tell stories by water during the hottest part of the day while doing projects like making simple bows and Atlatls (spear throwers). We will do more active games and exploration at dawn, dusk, and nighttime. These activities will focus on stealth, navigation, camouflage, throwing things, puppets, silly costumes, fun, and probably more than a few surprises. This is the place to come if you want to connect to the land, have the time of your life, and experience something totally new and different.
About Paul:
Paul grew up in the forests of the northeast. His interest in survival skills began with taking a bow making course at Maine primitive skills school in Augusta, Maine as a teenager. This led eventually to taking a year-long intensive course at Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, WA. Since then Paul has continued to follow the threads of nature connection, communal living, and connection to self through various adventures including an apprenticeship in survival skills and ethnobotany at Earthwalk Northwest, a year long wildlife tracking intensive at Wilderness Awareness School, mentoring youth at Wilderness awareness school, two seasons of trail work in northwest Montana, four years of off grid living and teaching at Quail Springs Permaculture in the Cuyama Valley, and a few summers leading teen expeditions at Farm & Wilderness camps in Plymouth, VT. Paul currently lives in Ojai and works part time for Wilderness Youth Project. He spends much of the rest of the time following his baby daughter Lucia around who also loves being outside.
The Music Production Bootcamp offers a ground-up overview of the roles of technology used in modern music production. Students will engage in a two-week intensive program designed for high school student who wish to explore and deepen their understanding of music and audio technology. Designed for student musicians and producers alike, the course explores studio production techniques for recorded music, electronic music production, music and audio hardware development, and much more. Students will interact with and learn from professional musician-instructors, as well as a roster of guest artists and workshop leaders with backgrounds in studio recording, live electronic music performance, computer music and programming, mixing and mastering, and collaborative music-making.
We’ll begin our week by creating a landscape, through painting with wool fibers to create our pictures. Students will have the option to turn their composition into an art pillow, if they so choose. Next, we’ll do some 3D needle felting to sculpt a landscape form and finally, students will have the opportunity to translate landscape imagery into glass through the process of enameling.
Michelle is a professional artist, mom, and long time art teacher in Ventura. She specializes in jewelry, metal-smithing, and fiber arts. In her weeklong workshops, she strives to share her unique skillset in an accessible way so that students can share in her love for her favorite mediums.
This week, we’ll create all things mushroom. We’ll begin with a 2D felted composition by painting with fibers and then exploring needle felting as we sculpt 3D forms. Finally, students will have the opportunity to try the process of enameling, as they make their own mushroom pendant.
Michelle is a professional artist, mom, and long time art teacher in Ventura. She specializes in jewelry, metal-smithing, and fiber arts. In her weeklong workshops, she strives to share her unique skillset in an accessible way so that students can share in her love for her favorite mediums.
This week we’ll draw inspiration from the natural world and the shapes, colors, and patterns that surround us. We’ll paint with wool fibers to create a picture, wet-felt a 3D form, and explore enameling to create our own charm pendants.
Michelle is a professional artist, mom, and long time art teacher in Ventura. She specializes in jewelry, metal-smithing, and fiber arts. In her weeklong workshops, she strives to share her unique skillset in an accessible way so that students can share in her love for her favorite mediums.
Join Lindsey Yeager, our high school learning resource and data science teacher for this special offering! Through interactive, visual, inquiry-based lessons, students will explore mathematical ideas in depth while cultivating a growth mindset. This creative, hands-on camp emphasizes:
We will be using you cubed curriculum, which has helped students to significantly improve math skills and grades in the next school year. Join us!
Join preschool teacher Brent Friedlander, aftercare teacher Jennifer Wing, and kindergarten teacher Laila Muller for some fun in the sun this summer on our Preschool playground. Our mornings will be filled with open-ended work and play, exploring things our campus has to offer. Days will brim with captivating, hands-on activities, fostering curiosity and a love of nature and forging lasting connections with peers and our experienced, nurturing teachers.
Led by first grade teaching aid and part-time basketball coach Heidi Anton, children will have fun learning different games and skills! Soccer, basketball, frisbee, and more!
Join Story Tables and let your imagination take flight! Run by former Oak Grove HS English teacher Ashton MacSaylor, Story Tables allows students to enter a game of the imagination and explore the magical world of Isles of Mist. Using only our words and ideas (no screens or technology required), we will create characters and weave a fantastical story of heroism and adventure.
Isles of Mist is our original tabletop roleplaying game system, similar to other popular roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons, but designed to meet the needs of younger players, while having enough depth for all ages. Players will learn to work together as a team to solve a wide variety of complex problems. This activity teaches teamwork, critical thinking, and creative problem solving, all while players are immersed in a gripping story.
Please bring a packed lunch as well as any snacks or drinks that students want to enjoy throughout the day. Temperatures can vary dramatically, so please dress in layers. Heat allowing, we will take some time for outdoor games, so make sure to come with footwear and clothing suitable for running around outdoors. If you have your own set of pencils and gaming dice, you are welcome to bring them! Otherwise, all materials will be provided.
Returning to the rigors of the daily school routine can be challenging, which is why bolstering students’ confidence and reactivating their enthusiasm for academic learning can be so beneficial prior to their re-entry to school. Led by sixth-grade teacher Mary Kelley, this week-long camp will allow students to reconnect (or connect for the first time) with their middle school peers, give students exposure to literature, informational text, and math in engaging ways that require them to think, discuss, and create together in small-group and whole-group settings. Mornings will begin with reading together and discussing what is read in Literature Circles. This will be followed by guided opportunities to research a topic of interest using informational texts, which culminate in the creation of an infographic to share with their parents and peers at the end of the week. After free play and lunch, students will engage in number talks, in which students explore numeracy and celebrate the different approaches to solving mathematical problems. Other exploratory math activities will be offered, to finish off their fun day of learning together!
Immerse yourself in a 5-day exploration of global soundscapes and expressive connections between music, nature, and art! Listening, moving, playing instruments, freeing and sharing inspiration, recording… Mornings dive deep into music/sound appreciation, history and art, with shared discussion and investigations; afternoons engage in more instrumental exploration and fieldwork, tapping into our primal instincts to create music and play freely.
Led by Ben Gerstein – musician, educator, and multimedia artist – this workshop will offer unique collaborative experimentation and documentation opportunities! We will have at our disposal for the week an incredible library and archive of sound recordings and artistic resources he has collected over the past 25+ years, which enhance our understanding of music/sound history and cultural/biodiversity. Among other things, we will utilize various media tools like a turntable, projector, CD and cassette player. Experience full-spectrum listening, from underwater depths to celestial heights; from world indigenous to the greatest Western classical music!
By week’s end, create personalized CDs documenting your sonic adventures and favorite listening experiences. All levels welcome in this dynamic, inclusive environment! Embrace music and sound as integral parts of life, forging transformative connections between art, nature, and humanity.
