StarPoint Camp 2025: Not Your Average Summer Camp
StarPoint Camp 2025: Not Your Average Summer Camp
Every summer, our Family Programs team has the opportunity to explore, laugh, play, and discover the world around us with an incredible group of people—kids from our neighborhood! Through generous donor and corporate support, we’ve been able to offer StarPoint Camp—an affordable, curriculum-based summer program—to children entering Grades 1–6 who live in the Mid-North neighborhood for nearly 40 years.
Here’s a brief look at how StarPoint Summer Camp changes children’s lives, having a direct impact on our surrounding community in 2025.
- 93 campers age 6–11 participated in four week-long camps
- All campers received a discounted rate
- Summer Servings, a USDA Summer Food Service Program, provided lunches for all campers
- 34 campers participated in the Summer Meals for Kids program provided by Gleaners Food Bank
Fun & Learning in the World's Largest Classroom
Activities focused on the theme for each week, while covering multiple academic areas. The 2025 StarPoint Camp weekly camp themes were:
- Powerful Paleontology
- Centennial Celebrations
- Retro is Rad
- A Peruvian Summer
Powerful Paleontology
Campers got a behind-the-scenes look into our Natural Sciences collection, 3D scanned bones like a real paleontologist, and built a model of a dinosaur eye.
Centennial Celebrations
Campers joined the centennial celebration by engineering towers with 100 cups, creating clay self portraits to capture their memories at the museum, and visiting Holliday Park to discover ways they can help protect our natural environments for the next 100 years.
Retro is Rad
Campers travelled back to the `80s and `90s to play Oregon Trail in infoZone, create their own troll keepsake, and design their own Beanie Baby.
A Peruvian Summer
Finally, campers “flew” to Peru, where campers were lucky enough to get a sneak peak at our brand-new Take Me There®: Peru exhibit and several programs, feast on a Peruvian lunched catered by Pisco Mar, and create their own design for a Peruvian blanket using common symbols and themes.
What Did Campers & Parents Have to Say?
What did campers say about their 2025 StarPoint Camp experience?
They loved all of the new experiences they encountered throughout the week. Some of this year’s favorites include:
They loved all of the new experiences they encountered throughout the week. Some of this year’s favorites include:
- Creating art with Barbara Zech and our Visiting Artists
- Learning about dinosaur fossils with our paleontology staff
- Weekly field trips
The most-mentioned field trips included a visit to the Nature Center at Holliday Park, where naturalists led campers on a Pond Study. Park staff also introduced the campers to a few of the center’s wildlife. Another camper-favorite field trip involved sampling Peruvian cuisine from a local Peruvian restaurant..
And the parents? All surveyed parents agreed that StarPoint camp was a positive learning experience and safe environment for their children, with 100% indicating they were “satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the overall experience. On average, campers demonstrated the achievement of learning outcomes at a rate of 98%.
And the parents? All surveyed parents agreed that StarPoint camp was a positive learning experience and safe environment for their children, with 100% indicating they were “satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the overall experience. On average, campers demonstrated the achievement of learning outcomes at a rate of 98%.
That’s a wildly successful summer camp experience!
Many Hands Help Make Starpoint Camp Incredible
StarPoint Camp is a highlight of every summer. But it takes many hands to create such a memorable experience for our neighbors.
A team of museum educators work year-round to plan the logistics, learning experiences, field trips, exhibit visits, and snacks (what’s a summer camp without snacks?!). The team strives to create curriculum that engages campers in learning about a wide variety of topics with hands-on activities, expert guest speakers, focused visits to nearly all of the museum exhibits while also providing summer fun. The team doubles in size for the summer as they hire classroom teachers, summer interns, and teens as junior teachers to help make summer magic happen. The summer kicks off with a three-day training that is a crash course in all things camp and the team is as ready as they’ll ever be to welcome campers
Thanks to the efforts of everyone who has been involved in making this camp come to life each summer, we had another incredible summer at StarPoint Camp!
A team of museum educators work year-round to plan the logistics, learning experiences, field trips, exhibit visits, and snacks (what’s a summer camp without snacks?!). The team strives to create curriculum that engages campers in learning about a wide variety of topics with hands-on activities, expert guest speakers, focused visits to nearly all of the museum exhibits while also providing summer fun. The team doubles in size for the summer as they hire classroom teachers, summer interns, and teens as junior teachers to help make summer magic happen. The summer kicks off with a three-day training that is a crash course in all things camp and the team is as ready as they’ll ever be to welcome campers
Thanks to the efforts of everyone who has been involved in making this camp come to life each summer, we had another incredible summer at StarPoint Camp!
