Day camps can be costly

Having kids costs money, yet they bring so much happiness into your life, and if you know how to find bargains, it need not cost you a lot of money. Summer is here. Day camps cost money, I searched online and saw plenty of camps that cost two to four hundred dollars a week. Wow! Really expensive! I signed up two weeks of day camps in a community center last year for $99 per week ( 5 hours a week, 5 days a week), but my daughter didn’t quite like it. I asked her why, she said that I was always late to pick her up, which was not true. I also put her one week of 3-hour camp in a neighborhood church for free. This year I was thinking of putting her again one week of church camp, and signing her up for swimming lessons, and spending most of her summer home having play dates with her little friends, but two weeks ago I got a brochure of recreation programs of the city in the mail, and saw that they have a tiny camp which only costs $80 for two months. It’s 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. That’s really cheap! I hesitated to go ahead and sign her up for a couple reasons: 1. it’s a little bit far, about 25-minutes drive; 2. it conflicts with her baby sister’s nap schedule. I tried to solve my dilemma by asking my friends to send their kids together to share carpools, and one of my friends happily joined me.

Cheap day camps don’t imply low quality

The camp started this week. I went there on Monday to check it out before I enrolled my daughter. The program leader showed me their camp schedule which includes many field trips, such as Oakland Zoo, Tilden Lake, Jelly Belly and Arden wood farms. It sounds a lot of fun. My daughter has been enjoying going there very much. She got up this morning, got dressed, wearing swimming suit underneath her outfit as her teacher requested yesterday, and putting sunscreen on herself, she is all ready to go to her camp by 8 AM, and yet her camp will not start until 12 PM. I’m glad that she likes it.

Blow are my tips for you:

1.Check out city sponsored day camps. Check out not only the city where you live, but nearby cities as well.

2.Search online first. Some cities’ web sites have detailed and up-to-date information, while some don’t, if you don’t see any day camp on the city’s web site, don’t assume that they don’t have.

3.Call or go to the city’s recreation and community services department to find information. I went there to enroll my daughter and saw that they have after school programs at different community centers for a very low price, and they also have a fitness center there for a low monthly fee. Great resources! You should all check out your local recreation department.

4.Go to community centers. There are usually flyers posted about available programs.