Aftercare & Extras | Oak Grove School | Pre-K-12

After-School & Summer Programs, Outdoor Education, Travel, and Mindfulness

Summer Program

Summer Camp registration is made available online, and payment is made in full at time of registration. If minimum enrollment is not met and the camp is canceled, you will be refunded any amount you paid. For additional camp information please email the camp director, Jeanette Berkovitz at camps@oakgroveschool.org

After School Program (K-6)

Looking for fun after school? You’ll really dig the Oak Grove After School Program! Join us for games, arts & crafts, wood crafts, special projects, beading, stories & reading, supervised free play and homework help. The program is open to both Oak Grove students and students from the community. We support creativity and intelligence in an atmosphere of playful cooperation and relaxation. Program Hours: Monday through Friday 2:30 to 5:00pm and Wednesdays 12:00 to 5:00pm. The cost is $10.00 per hour. Oak Grove’s After School Program also offers specialty classes. For more information email afterschool@oakgroveschool.com or call (805) 415-1432, or click on the PDF flyer links below.

Registration Form (Coming soon)

Elementary After-School Program (Coming soon)

Awakening Natural Relationship Through Camping and Exploration

Closeness with nature begins early at Oak Grove School. The wooded campus is bordered by acres of oak groves and wetlands, and the curriculum and daily schedule provide for large blocks of outdoor activity. On a given day, preschool children explore fields in search of seasonal insects and flowers, elementary classes tend herbs and vegetables, junior high students sketch in a rose garden, and high school sophomores spend biology class in a grove observing the web of life through energy exchange. A familiarity and comfort in nature is emphasized across the school, and nowhere is this better manifested than in the camping program. Through a graduated sequence of trips, students build their confidence, self-sufficiency, awareness, and appreciation of beauty. Most importantly, they develop self-knowledge through a relationship with nature and each other.

Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness is defined as paying attention in the present moment with kindness and curiosity. We learn to focus our attention, become less reactive and more compassionate with ourselves and others.

Mindful attention is like a “muscle” we can strengthen by practice. We can attend to the breath, sensations of the body, the senses, thoughts and feelings, and to people and events in our lives. This particular attention is openhearted and non-judgmental and brings about inquisitiveness and curiosity.

The approach of mindfulness practice is to simplify our outer and inner situation so that we can dedicate time and space and our attention to inner exploration (we sit still, close our eyes, use a reference point, etc.). We learn to focus and to relax, eventually at the same time.

Ideally, mindfulness practice should support development in all of the following realms of experience: Physical, mental, emotional, social and global. We start with ourselves (physical, mental, and emotional literacy) and then we open outward and pay attention to others and the world around us. First we ground ourselves physically, learn to recognize our emotions and energetic states. We discover how our minds work–the conveyer belt of random thoughts, our distractibility, our ability to focus, and the amazing “sudden jerks of awareness” in the midst of being lost in a fantasy world. We might realize that we have thoughts and emotions, but they are not the whole us. There is deeper rootedness and a natural sense of caring we can learn to rely on.

By being neutral observers of our bodies, minds, and hearts we naturally start to relax our harsh self-criticism. We can develop a broader view and feel kinder towards ourselves. From that ground we can apply the same neutral, gentle attention to our relationships and the world around us. We can start by setting the intention to spread the kindness we feel toward ourselves to other beings and the world we live in.

In the past we have mostly focused on the first three literacies. In accordance with the theme of social responsibility, we are including social and global literacy and a more active kindness practice in our curriculum this semester.