I have that child who is passionate about oceanography that you use as your example
. We live in the middle of the country but she is fortunate to have family on the coasts so she has had the opportunity to see the ocean. She probably won't be able to do the summer ocean programs in North Carolina that she'd love to do b/c we can't afford it, but we've tried for alternatives like ColinsMum suggests.
She did SCUBA classes in an indoor pool from the time she was eight. It was several hundred dollars for the initial SCUBA Ranger certification but only around $25-50 for future classes. We could do that even if we couldn't do thousands for the summer coastal camps. She's done other science camps that are free or inexpensive and local even if they weren't focused on marine biology. We actually found that the one "gifted" kid marine bio class she took at a STEM summer institute day camp locally wasn't a good thing b/c it seemed like it was more for much younger kids (even though she was one of the youngest) or kids with much less background knowledge in the subject.
Can you give us an idea of the area of passion and see if we can brainstorm some less expensive alternatives?
