Nano Camp — Collège du Léman, Versoix

Nano Camp is the entry point to holiday camps at Collège du Léman, an international day and boarding school on the shore of Lake Geneva at Versoix. It is built for children aged 4 to 7, an age group that most international camps do not serve at all, and it runs as a day camp: drop-off in the morning, collection in the late afternoon, Monday to Friday, with the child home every night. The programme is deliberately not academic. Published activities include outdoor games, cooking, treasure hunts, arts and crafts, and an excursion to the nature park and woods near the campus. Each week carries a theme, so a family booking more than one week does not get the same programme twice; themes used by the camp have included Into the Sahara, Wild West Adventures and The 4 elements. Supervision is described by the school as caring, supportive and experienced, which is the part most parents of a four-year-old actually want to hear about. Language is handled practically. Both English and French are spoken by the camp team. Because the week is activity-based rather than taught, a child does not need to be fluent in either language to take part, which makes the camp workable for a family passing through the Geneva area or newly arrived in Switzerland. Lunch and an afternoon snack are included in the price. Two extras are published separately and charged per week: a nursery option that extends the day into the early evening for parents whose working day does not end at five, and swimming lessons of about half an hour, three days a week, offered in the summer weeks only. The school does not publish menus or a list of catered dietary options, so allergies should be raised directly with the camp. On booking, the school publishes rates for one, two and three consecutive weeks in the summer period, and the additional weeks cost less per week than a single week on its own. Weeks can be combined, which lets a family cover a longer stretch of the holidays without changing provider. Note that the published summer weeks sit in the first half of the holiday period rather than spanning it, so this is a camp to slot into a plan rather than to build a whole summer around. What you get, in short, is a supervised, themed activity week for a small child on a well-equipped international school campus, with meals handled, two languages spoken and no overnight stay. What you do not get is a residential experience, formal teaching, or a published hour-by-hour curriculum. For parents based in or visiting the Geneva area with a child under eight, that trade is usually the right one.