I am not sure if you are talking about daycamp or sleepover. G.S. has wonderful overnight camps, and so does the YMCA. For 8 year olds sleep away camps can be as short as 4 days. Camps have all sorts of themes.
We have many daycamps in my area, including ones runs by my city and others that are more "daycare". Check out your city to see what they have. I personally prefer non academic ones. One problems I have had in finding summer activities is that not all camps publish their summer information at the same time. Some camps (often the more expensive & extensive) information is already out and you need to book by the end of Feb to get a spot. And other sutff like my city's camps & the school summer program aren't available till April.
I have always signed my kids up for camps, trying to make a compromise between sleep away camps (both my kids started with a week around 8), and half-day "fun" camps, and giving them some down time to do nothing. The most academic we ever got were science themed camps.
This year my DS14 will go to the same 2 week wilderness camp he as attended the past two years. Will do the marching band camp for the last two weeks of his summer. Probably won't do the jazz camp he did the last two years, he enjoyed it but the passion/cost ratio isn't there. I was interested in finding a computer programing class for him to take, but his summer is very short and am just thinking of throwing in a family vacation.
