It’s 24 degrees out, still February, and all I can think about is summer camp.

My kitchen table’s covered with camp propaganda: drama camps, sleepaway camps, science camps, sports camps.

My mission is to fill 12 weeks of summer vacation with activity that’s fun and safe, covers normal work hours plus commuting time and won’t break my budget (I always start now to catch the early bird registration discounts, which are typically 10%.)

Bonus points go to anyone or anything offering intellectual stimulation and educational value, but my ten-year-old daughter’s resistant to formal scholastics during the summer. She now wants a say in anything I sign her up for.

I can’t say I blame her. At her age, I spent many summer days on the couch reading voraciously, or watching Jeopardy and All My Children. I think an adult was present somewhere. Maybe not. My parents ran a two-income household long before it was the norm, fashioning a schedule that usually called for one of them to be present while the other worked.

Not me. I’m a divorced single mom with full-time responsibility. Still, most of my married friends who have kids face the same conundrum come summer. A handful are teachers and can offer a helping hand when school’s out, but I would never rely on them for consistent daycare.

Even if I were able to stay home with my daughter all summer long, she’d be something of a lone wolf; most of her friends are out of town or signed up for something. She’s not the bookworm I was, so short of my fantasy cross country road trip, I guess we’d join the neighboring town’s swim club and find kids to hang out with there.

I’ve heard tales of summer camp co-ops, where one or two parents rotate as camp counselor each week. I’m good with one kid, passable with two, but few who know me would entrust a gang of five or ten to my care for a full week.

So this is how summer 2008 is shaping up:

It kicks off with a month in Europe on a student exchange program. I’ll bring my daughter over in June. She’ll live with a family and bone up on her German (don’t ask), while attending classes for three weeks. This gets me through the July 4th holiday weekend and fulfills my summer enrichment quota. But it’s also economical!

Believe it or not, apart from my daughter’s week at Camp Grandma in August, Germany will net out as the cheapest leg of the summer because the only out-of-pocket cost is the $1,200 to get her there and back. (I’m not counting the cost of my flight because it doubles as my vacation.) My daughter is a veteran traveler with a demonstrated capacity to get along well on the road. It’s not an option that would work for everyone.

Next comes a week of relative downtime and reconnection with me, while spending her days at a local art and drama camp she’s really outgrown, but will tolerate.

Then she heads off for back-to-back weeks at a sleepaway camp. It’s an hour away and the closest thing she’ll get to summer heaven – a place that’s really about the woods and swimming and play. I have to pick her up on a Friday night and bring her back on Sunday between camp sessions, but at $375 per week, it’s worth it. Plus, this is her third year going so she’s made friends she looks forward to seeing.

August ushers in two weeks of soccer day camp (totaling $565), that indolent week at Camp Grandma and then what I like to call “the black zone” – the week before school starts when camp options seem to evaporate. I’ll figure that one out when I get to it.

I’m just grateful Labor Day comes early this year.

What do you have planned for summer? Weigh in now on The Exchange.