Mark Day School Summer Programs

Mark Day School Summer Programs include Summer Tinkering, Mountain Camp Marin, and Early Learners, with activities such as building large-scale creations out of wood, Archery, LARPing, Arts & Crafts, Music, Swimming, art projects, and chances to sing and dance. Summer Tinkering is described as an immersive, five-day building experience that uses real tools, begins each week with a surprise theme, and has included themes like Harry Potter, where students designed and built the Hogwarts Express steam train, and Pirates, where students built a giant pirate ship and an island. Mountain Camp Marin is described as a K-8 day camp that focuses on outdoor fun, creativity, and personal growth in a tech-free environment, and Early Learners is described as a developmentally-appropriate day camp specifically for incoming Mark Day School Kindergarteners.

• Ages: 4–13 years old
• Schedule: Week-long day camp sessions between June 15 and July 31, generally running 9:00am–3:00pm, with some Mountain Camp Marin groups ending at 4:00pm
• Price: Summer Tinkering: $700/week (fee assistance available); Mountain Camp Marin: $750/week (multi-week and Mark Day School family discounts available); Early Learners: $360/week

Summer Tinkering springs out of Mark Day School’s long-standing collaboration with the world-renowned Tinkering School in San Francisco and is described as student-centered, with four stated goals: make mistakes and learn from them; build something bigger than themselves; collaborate and make new friends; try harder than usual. Each week-long session of Summer Tinkering involves designing and building large-scale creations out of wood under the guidance of Mark Day faculty and staff, and each week begins with a surprise theme that provides the structure and story for the week.

Mountain Camp Marin is described as a K-8 day camp that offers the closeness and community feel of an overnight camp at the Mark Day School campus, focuses on outdoor fun, creativity, and personal growth, promotes social-emotional learning in a tech-free environment, and is described as helping campers build confidence and grow independence. Mountain Camp Marin also offers opportunities for campers to choose their own activities, giving them agency over their day, and it builds on a three-year research study with the Stanford Graduate School of Education on the beneficial impacts of the camp experience on child development.

Early Learners has been offered in some form for more than 20 years as a summer program specifically designed for incoming Kindergarteners at Mark Day School. Early Learners assists students in getting to know their new school and future classmates, helps them become familiar with the campus and school routine, and fills each week with dynamic and stimulating activities in a comfortable and supportive environment so that the newest members of Mark Day School transition smoothly from preschool to kindergarten.

The leadership team for Mark Day School Summer Programs includes Summer Tinkering Lead Instructors David St. Martin and Tatian Greenleaf, Mountain Camp Marin Camp Director Mario Del Cueto, Early Learners Lead Instructor Lisa Becker, and Director of Extended Day and Summer Programs Savannah Guinn. Mark Day School reports a 7:1 student-teacher ratio, a 380 student enrollment capacity, 36% of students as students of color, and teachers with an average of 22 years of teaching experience.

Mark Day School describes its mission as being a Bay Area independent school community founded on diversity, inclusivity, and lifelong learning, where each student, faculty and staff member, and parent and guardian is known. The school notes many ways it celebrates individuality, honors differences, and comes together, including twice-weekly all-school assemblies, Kindergarten and 8th grade buddies, and parent/guardian gatherings, and it describes itself as innovative and full of heart, balancing challenge and joyful learning. The school states that students learn habits of mind and personhood by pursuing curiosity, collaborating with peers locally and globally, and developing mindsets and toolkits to work on the problems of today and the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.

Mark Day School notes that its campus includes an amphitheater and quad used as gathering places for assemblies, recess, and group collaboration; a two-story Learning Commons that houses thousands of books for grades K-8 and is used for storytelling, research using databases, meeting published authors, and quiet activities like knitting and puzzles; a Creativity Lab described as a “cognitive playground” inspired by the MIT Media Lab where students bring their imaginations to life, learn to safely use machinery and equipment, learn to code and design, and start over and persevere; and a Digital Media Lab where students use professional equipment and programming such as stage lighting, Adobe Illustrator, and iMovie to produce digital creations.

Mark Day School states a Notice of Nondiscriminatory Policy that it admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school and does not discriminate on these bases in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs. Testimonials describe Mark Day School as a place that nourishes intellectual curiosity, professional aspirations, and love of learning in community, as providing a supportive, warm community focused on the joy of learning, and as setting a high academic bar while equipping students with agency and support, with parents and alumni attributing student growth and personal development to their experiences at the school.

Last updated March 20, 2026.