Kids love summer, and, as these local programs now open for registration prove, it’s not just because school’s out.
The City of New Haven’s all-purpose summer camps offer “age-appropriate activities and sports,” including “field trips, hiking on trails, and arts and crafts,” in public parks and facilities from Trowbridge Square to Lighthouse Point. More specific camps, meanwhile, include “All Things Water” (“a unique, challenging, and fun combination of outdoor adventure and environmental education”) at Sound School and a performing arts camp at Mauro-Sheridan School.
At a facility made for outdoor immersion, Common Ground’s “Adventure,” “Treehouse,” “Amazing Animals,” “Rangers” and “Cooking” summer camps may tempt parents to apply alongside their kids.
Just over the Hamden border, the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop offers an amazing 54 weeklong summer workshops over the course of nine weeks, with only a few repeats as far as I can spot. Their titles, whose scope and meaning you can explore on EWM’s website, include “The Art & Science of Fire,” “Analog Gamebuilder,” “A Day in Ancient Athens,” “3D Printing,” “Messing About in Boats: The Pond Yacht” and my personal favorite, “Mindstorms.”
Elm Shakespeare Company’s Players Camp (for younger kids) and Teen Troupe program (for older kids) stages classes in “voice, stage combat, classical acting and more,” all supporting rehearsals that culminate in a final performance.
At Foote School’s five-week Summer Theater camp, kids can “be part of a major hit musical production in our black box theater and learn valuable skills from professional teaching artists in performing and technical theater.” Or they can enjoy the broader pursuits of Falco’s Explorers, a program of hands-on classes ranging in subject from Dungeons & Dragons to landscape painting to athletics.
Gather New Haven’s famous Schooner Camp offers kids the chance to explore the coast and sail away from it. Last year’s campers played camp games, raced sail boats, practiced animal tracking and “built oyster reef balls” and “underwater robotic operational vehicles,” among other memorable activities.
Along with sports, “adventure” and more general academic choices, Hamden Hall offers its Summer Engineering and Science Academy, a “fully funded” weeklong intensive where accepted applicants “perform lab work and collaborate in groups to fully explore and make discoveries in the areas of DNA technology, forensics, coding, rocketry, cryptography, chemistry, and more,” with a swim session each day before lunch.
Hopkins changes the concept of summer school from a compulsory detour into an eager scenic drive, promising “an unforgettable journey of discovery” for middle and high school-age students. Younger students can choose between academics and enrichment (including a Model UN camp) while older ones can choose from a range of classes that sometimes read more like college courses. Meanwhile, a parallel squash program offers a different kind of training and development.
For three weeks or six, Neighborhood Music School’s Audubon Arts theater-centric summer program offers “activities designed to encourage self-expression and creativity” spanning “drama, dance, music, art, movement, and outside time every day.” In August, NMS also holds a weeklong Summer Jazz intensive as well as a Summer Brass Week.
The YMCA Camp Mountain Laurel day camp in Hamden hits some classic summer camp notes on its “20 acres of wooded space with an open shelter, outdoor swimming pool, archery station, gaga pit, ropes course and climbing wall.” The general docket includes “swim lessons and recreational swim, archery, STEAM activities, hiking, active games and sports [as well as] arts & crafts,” while “specialty” tracks focus on swimming, digital photography, fort-building, pottery, soccer, cooking and more.
It isn’t yet summertime, of course, but the time for planning your kids’ next summer is now.
Written by Dan Mims. Image sourced from the 2025 YMCA Camp Mount Laurel summer brochure.
