The latter features a treasure trove of affordable youth activities, with free to low-cost options for students on free or reduced lunch.Īlso in St. Paul Public Schools have opened registration for free summer learning programs, as well as adult and youth “Community Education” offerings. See the YMCA of the North and the YWCA, for starters, but don’t sleep on sign-ups. I’m also grateful for those camps that offer relatively affordable half-day programs, monthly payment options, scholarships or sliding scale “pay what you can” fees. Paul Parks and Rec summer registration opens April 3, and I tell you this with teeth gritted, as if giving away a passcode to online treasure.) It’s times like these I’m especially grateful for municipal Parks and Rec offerings, which are priced for us plebians. Overnight camps do not qualify, and are not tax deductible. The registration page has the gall to ask if you’d like to add lunch, at additional cost, and leave a tip.Ī silver lining for some of us: Keep in mind that day camps, even those organized around a sport or specific activity, qualify as day care, which is tax deductible. Now multiply that price by two, as in two tiny tots. A single week of Lego robotics can set a bleary-eyed dad back as much as $600, and yes, that’s just day camp. You see, there are armies of us, perched over a computer mouse well before 6 a.m., waiting to click-click-click-click-click…ĭon’t get me started on the cost. Let me repeat: There are online $%x#^! waiting rooms. These days, leading up to the moment of truth, there’s sometimes a virtual lobby, an online waiting room where competing prospective registrants co-exist in a digital limbo, hoping to be accepted among the chosen. I haven’t just failed to predict the ideal summer camps by early January, if not earlier, but I’ve failed to list dates and times when each registration opens. (Jean Pieri / Pioneer Press)Ĭoncerned camp mothers on the internet (and yes, there are many) tell me what my spreadsheet is lacking. The instruction was part of a week-long YMCA camp, part of the city’s Connecting Children to Nature Initiative. Paul, on how to hold and release the fish she just caught from Lake Phalen in St. Michelle Kelly, right, of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, instructs Joeslyn Salgado-Ayala, 9, of St. ![]() Paul Omnitheater and a discount on parking? It’s access, six days early, to camp registration, a benefit that has been clearly lost on me two years in a row while I fumble with a spreadsheet designed to predict my children’s activities, week by week, sometimes hour by hour, some six months or more in advance. What’s the beauty of a membership to the Science Museum of Minnesota, beyond free year-round entry to exhibits, the downtown St. The glory and pain of summer camp spreadsheets “We signed up kid for a Y camp in NOVEMBER, on the day registration opened, and AN HOUR after registration opened, our top choice filled,” Tweets a mom my way. That’s nothing, honey, says the Internet. How late to life are we? Snapology in Minneapolis began taking sign-ups for its Lego camps on Dec. (Nina Thompson / Pioneer Press)īoth of my children are suddenly, as if by magic, old enough for camps oriented toward grades 1-3, arguably the most competitive and least forgiving of all registrations. You snoozed and lost - and yes, that’s my own inner voice speaking to me, bawling even, just like it did last year when camp registrations began opening across the metro, popping up like pricey, tragic whack-a-mole.Ĭoach Taylor Van Denburgh leads a demonstration on climbing silks for campers at Twin Cities Trapeze Center during a summer day camp in St. A rejected soldier on the battlefield of life. A fetid shame hovering above their wife and children. in mid-February to set their kids’ schedule for June, July or August is a lazy parent indeed. That’s right - a parent logging in at 6:30 a.m. If you hesitate to brave the digital cold, even by half an hour, your top picks are gone. ![]() 13, a frigid winter’s morning/mourning.įor all intents and purposes, registration closed for parents of the very young a picosecond later, by which time all the choice cuts had been gobbled up by moms, dads and other vultures. For example, my best friend the Internet tells me that the University of Minnesota offers popular and intriguing camps for tots - “Raptor Bio-mimickry” and “Beginner Coding: Pokemon Adventures” jump out on paper - but the online registry began at 6 a.m. ![]() There is a battle for the soul of America, gosh darn it, and it’s being waged online, around summer camp registration.
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