Best Overnight & Sleepaway Summer Camps

Overnight camps can help build your child's independence, confidence, and develop interests away from screens. They can also help create long lasting friendships!

Kids do best if they’re open, flexible, and positive about new experiences. Kids who prefer the indoors and solo activities may do better with a shorter stay or an academic-themed overnight camp.

Sleep away camp shouldn’t be your child’s first time away from home without parents. For new campers or kids 8 or younger, start with overnights at homes of friends or family.

Some kids do, but if not, they may experience more personal growth. Being with a new group of kids means they get to shed the expectations that people have of them at home, which can be freeing.

A few good questions: How many are adults? Are any of them former camp kids? What experience and training do they have? How many kids are there per staff member? How many years have they worked there?

Involve your child in researching and selecting where they will go. Kids will have a better time if they are headed somewhere that they chose and that has activities that interest them.

- Michael Richards, Science Camps of America, Pahala, HI

- Lee Tempkin, Camp Chrysalis, Berkeley, CA