There are 11 weeks between June and September — and the race to fill them begins right now for the parents of many school-age children.

Finding summer camps and child care requires finesse, forethought, healthy cash reserves and strategizing that would test the skills of a military planner.

For Sarah Nicholson, executing her family's summer schedule begins in February and involves a spreadsheet to sort out summertime camp options for her 9-year-old daughter.

The Ballard woman and her husband surf the Internet for camp information, plugging dates, cost, location and transportation into the chart. Last summer, they spent hundreds of dollars to send their daughter to four different camps for a total of seven weeks.

Nicholson talks over the choices with her daughter and tries to coordinate camp dates with her friends' parents. The project takes parts of weekends for a couple months.

Camp fair tomorrow Seattle Center House will be the site of a free summer-camp fair from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow. Representatives from about 45 day and overnight camps are to attend the fair, co-sponsored by Seattle's Child magazine. Activities for children are planned as part of the fair.

If you haven't got it nailed down by April, she said, "you're behind."

"I dread it," Nicholson said.

The drill is familiar to parents of the more than 315,000 school-age children between ages 5 and 14 in King and Snohomish counties.

It's a major investment for some families. A family with two children easily could spend $500 or more per week on summer camps — $5,500 for the whole summer.

And the choices are head-spinning. During a weeklong day camp in Seattle, a child can:

Help pilot a Cessna ($410 at the Museum of Flight); kayak and sail on Lake Union ($250 through Moss Bay Rowing, Kayaking and Sailing Center); identify local birds at a nature camp ($170 through Seattle Audubon Society); or learn radio broadcasting ($160 through Coyote Junior High). There's even a "mobile day camp" that offers door-to-door transportation from your home and daily field trips ($189 through Summer Adventures Day Camp in Woodinville).

Seattle's Child magazine is sponsoring its first summer-camp event tomorrow at Seattle Center and expects as many as 600 families to attend.

Two area private schools, St. Thomas School in Medina and The Bush School in Seattle, held summer camp fairs last month that drew hundreds of parents.

Average price is $135 a week

Among the 1,500 licensed child-care providers in King County who care for school-age children, their average summer rate is $135 per week, said Ruth Engle, parent-services coordinator for Child Care Resources of King County, an information and referral agency.

Tips for picking camps Here are some things to remember, and questions to ask. • Few camps or programs go all summer. Most parents end up with a patchwork of camps and other care to cover the summer months. • Many summer day camps follow an elementary-school schedule — half-day camps often run from 9 a.m. to noon, and a full day may stretch until 3 or 4 p.m. Some, but not all, offer extended hours for an additional fee. • The shorter hours may lead to "patching" — having one child-care arrangement in the morning, another for after camp. Putting it all together and arranging for transportation can tax the most organized parent. To cope, parents may need to alter their work hours or court friends or relatives to help out. Other possible solutions: Offer to pay a camp staffer to provide extended care or arrange carpools with other families. • Some camps contacted by The Times said they could be flexible about providing after-camp supervision. It never hurts to ask. • Parents often need to provide sack lunches and snacks, even in the most expensive camps. • The prekindergarten set and "tweenagers" pose special summer-camp problems. Many camps require children to have a year of school under their belts. Other camps only accept children through age 12. Parents may struggle to find care that is acceptable to their 13- to 15-year-old. To fill the void, some families patch together summer care by hiring a neighborhood teen as a summer companion, sharing a nanny among several families or putting older children in charge of younger siblings for part of the day. Questions to ask: • Safety: How does the camp ensure children's safety? How many staffers are trained in CPR/first aid? How are staff selected and trained? How experienced is the staff in dealing with children? How are new staff or younger staff supervised? Do staffers carry cellphones? • Supervision: What is the ratio of campers to staffers? Are children divided into same-age groups? • Programs: What is the camp's program philosophy or focus? How does the camp communicate with parents about its daily programming? What would the camp do if a child did not want to participate in a particular activity?

The least expensive programs tend to be run by religious groups or nonprofit agencies like the Union Gospel Mission or the Boys & Girls Clubs, Engle said.

Midpriced ones are run by organizations like Camp Fire USA, YMCA of Greater Seattle or some licensed child-care programs.

Spendy ones may focus on a specific skill or interest area — sports, computers or drama — and are offered by private schools or organizations.

Those specialty day camps may start at $200 a week and reach $500 or more. Overnight camps and those that involve travel can cost thousands of dollars. The "Service Learning in Paris" organization offers a four-week travel-study-volunteer program for teens for $5,800 — not including "airfare, lunch and personal expenses."

Little is known about how the quality of summer care affects children's development or academic performance — or whether cost and quality go hand in hand.

A study by the Urban Institute in 2002 found that child-care costs increase 34 percent during summer for higher-income families, in part because parents pay more for summer camps and enrichment experiences.

But child-care costs for lower-income families drop by 24 percent during the summer, according to the study, because they may rely more on informal care provided by family members or neighbors, or leave children on their own.

What's clear is that low-income children tend to lose academic ground in the summer.

But it's not clear whether spending less on child care by low-income families means those children are receiving lower-quality care, and whether that makes a difference when school opens again in September.

Camps fill fast

Camps of all kinds are growing in popularity — the number of day camps in the U.S. has grown nearly 90 percent in the past 20 years, according to the American Camping Association.

Some of those camps fill fast — long before parents have the issue on their radar screen.

Roger Page, a parent and owner of Island Books on Mercer Island, said he has found some popular camps — a science program at Discovery Park, for example — already full in February.

"You realize you have to be way more aggressive than you thought," Page said.

Programs such as Seattle Parks and Recreation offer financial aid, but the deadline may pass before parents are aware of it, and scholarships go unclaimed, Engle said.

Before making the big summer-camp investment, making sure it's the right kind of camp is key.

"Even in the same family, one kid may be fine with doing something new every week while another may need the stability of a single caregiver," Engle said.

Narrow your choices by considering your child's interests, your family's needs and your budget.

Some families start with a summer calendar and go week by week, mapping out different care arrangements and fitting in camps where there are holes, she said.

"If you're trying to cover all your summer care through camps, that gets a little crazy," said Marianne Scholl, community-relations manager for Seattle's Child magazine.

"A lot of people pick a couple (of camps) every summer," she said. Many parents "aim to match their kids' interests, and it'll be a highlight of the summer."

Summertime experiences don't have to be limited to camps. For older students, there is an increasing interest in volunteer work during the summer, "not just fancy camps you pay through the nose for," said Elizabeth Atcheson, director of admission and financial aid at The Bush School.

That allows budget-conscious parents to save a little and lets kids have a meaningful experience "that's not school but that is real learning," she said.

Once you pick a camp or summer experience, make sure it's a good fit for your child. Nicholson, the Ballard mother, said her daughter felt awkward at a sports camp last summer in which she was one of just a handful of girls.

"I wish I had researched that one a little more," she said.

Lazy days of summer?

With safety increasingly on parents' minds, Engle believes parents are keeping their children in organized child care longer than they used to, both during the school year and the summer.

"The idyllic summer of romping around the neighborhood on a bike with a bunch of friends may be a thing of the past," agreed Scholl.

But kids may get little break in their schedule, starting in on summer camps almost as soon as school lets out in June.

"That's kind of the thinking now — to have your kids do as much as they possibly can," said Greg Daley, Seattle camps director for both Evergreen Academy and Brighton School. The schools offer a full summer schedule of day camps, plus martial arts, piano and additional instruction after the camp day is over.

Many families work toward a balance of scheduled time and less structured activities, sometimes by relying on informal care by family or friends.

Nicholson, in Ballard, said her daughter made a special request last summer. For one week, she wanted the experience of "just being at home — no school, no camp, just barefoot summer."

The family was able to accommodate her request to coincide with a weeklong visit by her grandmother — but "it's kind of sad that it had to be a special request," her mother said.

Jolayne Houtz: 206-464-3122 and jhoutz@seattletimes.com