Build a Summer Education for Rising 1st-8th Graders
Summer BASE Camp 2025 Details
General Registration for BASE Camp is now open. Use the Help Hub button to contact our staff with any registration issues.
BASE Camp Schedule 2025
Registration
Registration is now open. If you experience any issues with registration, fill out a help form using the Help Hub button.
FAQs
Get answers to your most important questions concerning BASE Camp.
Gift Card Options
Login or create an Amilia account below for full access to view and purchase gift cards for this year’s upcoming OPEF BASE Camp.
BASE Camp Handbook
A list of the basic information from who to contact to what to bring to camp. 2025 Handbook coming soon!
Learn more about our partnership with D97 during the summer using the link below!
A Sample of Our OPEF BASE Camps
Science of Sweets
Science of Sweets takes a close look at the delicious science of sugar. Campers examine how temperature influences crystal formation and see first hand how science works to create different textures in sucrose. Density, saturation, and dynamic equilibrium are just a few terms that are explored.
Biking Adventures
During biking adventure, campers learn and practice bike maintenance and biking safety as they ride to destinations such as Thatcher Woods, local cafes and recreation areas. This camp provides opportunities for our campers to become more comfortable on their bike as well as learn more about places that they can bike to in our community.
Experimentation Station
Experimentation Station is all about hands-on experiments with things gooey, strange, stinky, colorful, eruptive, surprising, and always fun! Campers hypothesize about the science behind the reactions they see.
Shoe Drip & Apparel Art
During Shoe Drip/Apparel Art, Campers embellish and customize their own gear. Using paints, bling and other materials, campers design their own unique pair of footwear and other apparel that they then take home.
Earth Ambassadors
Our Earth Ambassadors camp is all about the science of sustainability — from climate change to biodiversity to alternative energy — to help our campers become more informed citizens and effective activists. Campers engage in hands-on projects, guided discussion and immersive field trips.
Cardboard City
During Cardboard City, campers design and construct a small-scale city with upcycled cardboard. Campers learn about the structural properties of different types of cardboard. All design, engineering, and construction is camper-led.
“My kids love OPEF’s BASE Camp. They have done the coolest things every summer with amazing teachers and staff. I can’t say enough about how lucky we are to have this program here in Oak Park”
— Oak Park Parent of Three
OPEF Is Excited to Offer Gift Cards for Camp!
Login or create an Amilia account below for full access to view and purchase gift cards for OPEF BASE Camp.