Summer Day Camps at The Ecology School have always focused on lots of time outside, exploring nature, and lots of fun with friends, new and old. Director of Educational Partnerships, Meg, reflects on the camps of the past and looks ahead to our exciting Overnight Summer Camp program, beginning this summer (2020)!

Written by Meg Edstrom Jones, Director of Educational Partnerships

A Retrospective
Beginning in 2008, we hosted our first Garden Day Camps at our original coastal campus in Saco, Maine. Located on a secondary dune next to the ocean, our one-acre garden was a heavily amended mix of compost, seaweed, soil, and sand. Utilizing a four-binned compost system, we taught students how to make soil from sandwiches, how to determine which insects were pests and which were beneficial, and how to make snacks from the tasty plants growing all around us. Campers spent their mornings in the garden, and the afternoon at the beach, learning even more about coastal ecosystems as they played in the surf and sand.

We also ran our first Family Camp, and invited adults to join their kiddos on different field trips each day to hidden nature gems along the coast. Families journeyed from tide pools to mountaintops, experiencing the wonders of nature together while aboard ferry boats or canoeing down estuary rivers. In 2014, we shifted gears, and began running our summer day camps out of the Ocean Park Association in Old Orchard Beach. This gave us the opportunity to explore multiple ecosystems each day, where we could begin in the forest, wind up at the tidal creek, and even finish the day with some shuffleboard or a dip in the ocean.

We have loved our camp time at OPA, and are looking forward to our seventh summer there in 2020! Also in 2016, we began offering a camp for our preschool aged friends down in Kennebunk. Partnering with Cocoons School gave us an opportunity to explore with a different age group, and meet new camper friends and families from communities just south of the Saco Bay area. The Cocoons campus abuts property preserved by the Kennebunk Land Trust, and its inviting meadows of blueberries and barnyard of animals provided lots of new material for our campers (and leaders!) to enjoy. We will not be returning to Cocoons this year, and instead preparing for our 2021 camp season which will include five weeks of overnight kids’ camp programs, and making some time and development space to be transitioning our camp focus to an overnight model.

Looking Ahead
So here we are, thirteen years later, about to run our luckiest year of camps yet. We will be returning to Ocean Park, where we will be offering three weeks of Ecology Adventure Day Camp, welcoming back years of returning campers and their families, in addition to a separate short day camp program for the OPA Education Bureau. (Registration is now open!)

But most excitingly, we will be holding our very first overnight camp for 6th-8th graders. For this first year, while our new campus at River Bend Farm is being constructed, we will be running our camps out of Poland Spring Resort, in Poland, Maine. This is the same location we have been holding our Fall and Spring Residential School Programs since March 2019, and provides an amazing transitional opportunity for us to field test our overnight summer camp model where we are familiar with the site and the staff. We are also excited to partner with Maine Audubon on this summer camp, which we will be marketing to our mutually aged-out campers, who no longer fit the younger age range for our day camps. Providing an opportunity for middle school kids to continue coming to a camp that they are familiar with, and to experience an overnight camp with some of the same familiar friends and camp leaders, is an amazing transition to the rest of middle school and preparing for high school and, eventually, becoming camp counselors themselves! Campers will spend their days outside, exploring the extensive trail systems, meeting new friends, and experiencing everything that an overnight camp in Maine has to offer.

Summer 2021 isn’t far away, and with it comes big changes to our summer camp programs, model, and focus. We are super excited for what’s in store at River Bend Farm, and being able to utilize our dining hall, living buildings, and sustainably designed campus for an overnight summer camp like no other.

Think you young nature lover would like to join us at camp?
Click here for program and registration information for our Overnight Camp.
Click here for program and registration information for our Ecology Adventure Day Camp.

Camps at The Ecology School: 13 Years of Day Camps (and NOW, in 2020, Overnight Camps!)

The Ecology School transforms how people think about science, food, the environment, and themselves through joyful, hands-on learning for all ages.