Douglass Ridley School Summer Camp

Kids spend their days as scientists, explorers, and artists at Douglass Ridley School’s summer camp, where Reggio-inspired investigations turn ordinary curiosity into hands-on discovery. Each day includes extended outdoor time along Boston’s Emerald Necklace, giving campers space to observe, question, and dig into the natural world around them — whatever catches their attention that day, whether it’s bugs, water, or building.

Those outdoor investigations feed directly into visual art projects back at camp, where kids sketch, paint, and build using what they found and noticed outside. Rather than following a fixed lesson plan, the art grows out of the same curiosity driving the exploration — so a morning spent watching pond life might turn into an afternoon of painting it, and a walk through the woods might come back as a collage of leaves and bark. It’s a camp where looking closely at the world and making something from it are part of the same process.