You are welcome to take a tour at Congressional and meet with our staff. Best of luck in your search.

We've always just based it on word of mouth from friends or experience with short-term classes from the same provider (like at our local nature center). But I never signed kids up for more than 2 weeks at a new camp so if they ended up not liking it they didn't have to be there for long. When DD first did sleepaway camp we did go to a local information session to meet the director and learn more about it.

I mostly just relied on word of mouth. Even if you did visit the school or location, the camp doesn't always have much to do with the actual location. It's the counselors that make or break the camp, I think, and they wouldn't be there during a school day or non-camp day.

The problem with waiting for some sort of open house is that many popular camps fill up before you get to the open house. I've already registered for 5 of our 8 weeks and am close to registering for the rest.

Don't forget word of mouth from people you know and reviews here - I take those into account and have really benefitted as a result.

This summer will be our first at camp and I have the same concerns as you. However, last summer I visited a couple of camps while they were in session to get a feel. We'll most likely do one of those. I discovered a few more recently but as you mention may not get a chance to visit those before hand.

Some camps have open house days in Feb./March, usually on a Sat./Sunday.

When my kid was that age, I just picked one camp for the whole summer. Now that she will be a rising 2nd grader, we're mixing it up a bit, and catering to her specific interests a bit more.

Asking questions of the director is reasonable. Seeing the building -- where a completely different and unrelated program is currently running -- won't tell you anything about the camp.

My DD is 4... I would prefer to visit the school where the summer camp will be happening and see where they will be spending their time/meet with the director, ask questions, etc. But I imagine if every parent did this they'd have their hands full. Do parents typically do that or just trust that all is well and send them through the door?