Parents with tight summer budgets turn to DIY camp

— -- Alma Schneider's 8-year-old daughter loves fashion. Her neighbor owns a wedding couture business. It was a match made in DIY heaven and an answer to a problem faced by other cash-strapped families trying to make it through summer without pricey kid classes and camps.

"It costs too much money to send all my kids to camp. It's just not possible," said the Montclair, N.J., mother of four.

Charging $150 per child, Christine Sapienza led a week of "fashion camp" for Schneider's oldest, Ilah, and five pals. She showed the girls how to make fancy T-shirts, wrap skirts and button bracelets while Schneider entertained her three other kids.

The group put on a fashion show for parents the last day, and Sapienza surprised each girl with an inexpensive portable sewing machine.

"The kids had such a great time we're doing another week of it in August," said Schneider, a food blogger who plans to charge $60 per family for her own healthy cooking camp next month.

"I'm a community minded person," she said. "If we all shared our skills and talents we wouldn't have to outsource everything. It's a great model to learn from each other's expertise."

Other parents facing hard financial times are joining the DIY camp movement as they try to survive the muggy months.

Stephanie Reyes in Brooklyn, N.Y., charges $60 a day per family for a playground romp, an art or science activity and a theater performance put on by her campers. She throws in a snack and a nap back at her place for eight to 12 kids, including her 6-year-old son Milo.

"They even get to design the props and costumes," she said.

Elizabeth Laura Palmer and her cartoonist husband, Tom Palmer, haven't taken on the children of others, but they took on a camp mentality for their two girls due to tight finances that precluded far more expensive programs. They created a schedule: Up at 8 a.m., breakfast and out the door for one major outing each day.

Without a plan, Palmer said, she had been afraid Molly, 7, and Violet, 4, wouldn't make it out of the house this summer. "The kids would be content to stay at home, read, play Barbies and imaginary games," she said. "But by 3 or 4 they'd get restless and start fighting."