Call of the Wild Camps: Outdoor Nature Camps

Call of the Wild Camps - Outdoor Nature Camps offers outdoor day camps where children hike easy to moderate trails, explore nature, and use nature as a living classroom. Campers take part in activities such as rock scrambling, tree climbing, nature walks, log climbing, building forts and teepees, building fairy houses in a Create-With-Nature Zone, and playing creative field games, races, obstacle courses, and child-directed play including bubbles, ball play, and playing on play structures. The program includes reading, writing, creative writing, nature journaling, story time with colorful books, perspective-taking games, crafting and illustrating wilderness adventure stories and nature poems, creating “choose your own adventure” stories, skits, singalongs, movement, and teamwork by coauthoring stories, along with biology and environmental education such as plant, animal, and mushroom identification, animal watching, animal track identification, and games about animal senses and adaptations.

Campers do scavenger hunts and treasure hunts with pictures and riddles, mapmaking, animal fact versions of hide and seek and chase games, animal Mad Libs comedy, animal “Guess Who?” games, and forest “I Spy” games. They engage in Enchanted Forest Art with nature-inspired and eco-friendly arts and crafts, Enchanted Forest Stories with oral storytelling, reading, writing, and emergent literacy, Enchanted Vegan activities about living values of being “kind to all kinds” and cruelty-free for animals and the environment, and Trailblazers activities that explore more epic trails and nature-inspired discoverers and activists. Art activities include creating nature-themed rainbow scratch art, drawing nature puzzles, making beaded necklaces, painting suncatchers, animal face painting, illustrating forest stories and journals, coloring animals and nature scenes, crafting with upcycled materials, and visual arts integrated with science facts and positive environmental science messages. The camps also include reading and perspective taking with animal facts, creating story elements in a “story mountain,” nature connection, nature journaling, leave no trace activities, environmental stewardship, learning amazing animal facts, bios of naturalists, activists, and wildlife artists, and eating healthy food while strengthening stamina and developing executive functioning skills to become hike leaders and make friendships.

Seasonal and holiday-themed activities include exploring nature-themed holiday books, learning facts about seasonal survival and adaptations for plants and animals, funny stories celebrating Thanksgiving with sensitivity toward animals, Native American Heritage Month activities, nature-themed Christmas, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa activities, playing reindeer games, coloring nature-themed calendars for New Year’s Day, Easter egg hunts in the forest, and Juneteenth activities on Underground Railroad wilderness navigation. Previous hiking experience on varied terrain for at least three miles spaced out over the day is required for campers.

• Ages: 5–10 years old

Inspire Behavioral Learning states that Call of the Wild Camps are 100% outdoors with nature as the living classroom and that services are based on research in behavioral science, psychology, education, biology, linguistics, and applied behavior analysis (ABA). The program uses an emergent, child-centered curriculum with experiential learning based on children’s interests, offers a blend of outdoor education and recreation with biology and language arts enrichment, and emphasizes kindness for campers and animals along with enjoyable exercise on hikes and in play. Call of the Wild Camps are offered in summer, fall, winter, and spring as academic seasonal camps, and families can register for camps on second Saturdays, spring break camps, and 2026 summer nature camps across the Bay Area. The program typically runs small groups of about eight to ten children with a child-to-staff ratio of 4:1 or 5:1 in most sessions, and it offers free Counselor in Training (CIT) internships for teens in grades 9–12 and young adult college or university undergraduates. Inspire’s mission is to empower people of all abilities to live happier, more independent and fulfilling lives by achieving their learning goals.

Last updated March 16, 2026.