Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments how to find summer camps for gifted kids?

title says it all. I can start blindly googling, but I wanted to ask here first in case there is a website or something that can help.

Thanks!

Here is a link with a pretty comprehensive list...

http://thecommonmom.com/summer-camps-for-gifted-kids-and-teens/

Some long-standing lists of summer camps for the gifted include those curated by
- Hoagies Gifted Education Page lists
- Davidson Database list
- NAGC list
- Each State's local NAGC affiliate
- Many colleges
The lists do not all seem to be updated yet for 2015, but often contacting an institution results in them completing their updated annual list rather quickly.

The Davidson Database offers questions to guide decision making in on summer camp experiences:
Tips for Parents: Finding a Summer Camp - http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10199.aspx
Summer Programs (residential & day camp links) - http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10069.aspx
Tips for Parents: Outside of School Educational Opportunities - http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10680.aspx

Hoagies also has a page of tips on selecting a camp, which in many ways mirrors a school selection process.

If your child has access to a gifted placement, ask the teacher. There's no substitute for local knowledge/experience...

What is your child interested in? Are you looking for an academic camp or just something that will expand their horizons? My DS has always wanted a break from academics over the summer and thus we have had good luck with a variety of things. From music camp, robotics camps, to wilderness outdoor camps. I've only enrolled him in camp for gifted once, it was local and he enjoyed it. At that he had fun learning chemistry and physicals at the local university.

Good Luck

The only other list I know is the Duke TiP Educational Opportunity Guide and I haven't completely parsed through it yet. If you don't mind sharing a grade/interest/general location, I've done a LOT of blind googling myself.

FWIW, we have found that interest-specific camps are better than "gifted" camps. Maybe we are outliers, but we found that CTY camp was just not all that high-level. It was a mob scene, and it turns out that many of the kids aren't all that highly gifted, so the peer group is mixed (apparently, CTY admits qualified-score kids first but then just fills slots). So the peer group isn't composed of serious intellectual kids necessarily.

But my dd has had an amazing experience doing Shakespeare in Orlando (Orlando Shakespeare Theater) and elsewhere -- these serious Shakespeare camps self-select a really good (and gifted) crowd of kids, and not all that many "my parents are making me" kind of kids. Ditto high-level classical music camps -- lots of gifties, but united by a special skill not just IQ.

GF2 - did your kid(s) do the CTY Intensive Studies, or CTY Academic Explorations (or something else)? The Academic Explorations and Intensive Studies camps have very different eligibility scores.

My DD14 did a Neuroscience class in the Intensive Studies program and had a blast. She also felt like she was surrounded by lots of gifted kids. Perhaps the neuroscience course, with its extra prerequisites, biased her sample, but she seemed impressed with the camp as a whole.

She enjoyed it so much, she'll be going back this summer.

Best of luck,
--S.F.

Has anyone here tried

http://www.giftedstudy.org/pdf/brochures/2015_catalog_day.pdf?

A friend of mine told me about this one. It is very expensive and I did not think it was worth it for my 6 year old. But wondering whether anyone here has done it?

Ditto. My ds also really enjoyed the CTY Intensive Studies camp he attended, a science course that's not offered through our local high school program.

FWIW, we've also had some good luck with non-gifted camps. DS really enjoyed summer camp at our local state university. Even though there were no admissions requirements other than a "good" grade point average, the nature of the camp (high level science) attracted only seriously interested students.

When my kids were younger they really enjoyed outdoors camps and camps at our local museum, even though they weren't limited to gifted kids - so I wouldn't limit my search based on gifted alone.

Best wishes,

polarbear