Round-To-It Recommends: Walden West

Our older kids just finished a week of camp at Walden West Science Center in Saratoga, CA.  It was an incredible experience for both of them and they both said they'd love to go back next year.

Their main camps are day camps (they do offer backpacking trips for kids 12-16), the summer camp for kids ages 7-12 and the Wild Things camp for kids ages 5-7.  Both are held at the Walden West facility in the Saratoga hills, with buses taking the kids from a local elementary school and returning them in the afternoon.  The older kids have the option of camping out on Thursday night, if they choose.

The focus of the camps at both levels is environmental awareness and providing an outdoor experience.  So many kids today spend the vast majority of their time indoors and these camps hope to counteract that by showing kids the beauty and excitement of the natural areas that are so accessable to us.  Most of the activities are traditional camp activities: hiking, gardening, swimming, arts and crafts, games, songs, climbing wall, and ropes course.  The camp songs are a bit different from most of those that I've heard since they focus on things like the importance of worms, banana slugs, and scat, but the silly actions and enthusiasm of the counselors and campers are exactly what you'd expect!  There is a good balance between planned group activities, like hikes, and individual choice, where the kids have a number of options for how to use their time.  Our kids spent a good amount of time in the pool, but also tried archery, crafts, and group games that they had never played before. 

The older campers all chose nature names for the week, to go along with the nature names of all of the counselors.  Our son was "Python" and his counselor was "Big Brown Bat".  Our daughter's counsleors were "Clam Chowder", "Aurora",  and "Poppy", to name a few.  According to a friend, whose sixteen-year-old daughter has been going to Walden West since she was nine, the kids often keep their nature names from year to year.  Her daughter has been "Blue Jay" for the last seven years.

The two big events for our son this week were the climbing wall and the campout.  He had never done either, but wasn't particularly nervous about them.  His group did the wall on Wednesday afternoon, spending the whole afternoon giving the kids the chance to try climbing multiple times.  His only disappointment was that there was no way to actually climb on top of the wall when he got there - apparently there wasn't any place to put his hands or feet when he tried.  The campout was the first time he had spent a night away from home - not for any partcular reason, he's just never had the opportunity.  It was also the first time he'd slept out under the stars, which he didn't speak so highly of.  It was pretty darn chilly last night (maybe 50 degrees) and really damp, so everything was pretty wet during the night.  They woke up to ground fog, making the morning "freaky", in his words.  He did enjoy being away for the night, though, eating with the group of kids in the lodge, and just generally being responsible for himself.

Our daughter's week was less dramatic, but she loved the experience and true to her nature, got to know absolutely everyone in the program.  She also liked the fact that they got to choose their afternoon activities and often tried multiple things in one afternoon.  This afternoon when we asked her how her day was, she replied, "It was okay."  That was a luke-warm response compared to the lengthy explanations we had been getting, so we questioned her about why it was only "okay".  She said, "It was only okay because it was the last day and I won't get to see my friends any more."  Testimony enough for us that it was a great experience for her, too.

I went up for the evening program on Thursday night and it was very clear that there were many families whose kids had been attending the camps there for years.  That spoke volumes to me about the quality and draw of their programs and I definitely see us being in those ranks as all of our kids make their way through the programs.  For them, it's less the importance of getting time outside since we do spend a good amount of time doing outdoor activities.  It's really more the traditional camp experience of goofy counselors, meeting new kids, and experiencing a good amount of independence that make it a really worthwhile week.