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

Something we're encountering as the kids get into middle school ages is that camps where the kid needs to write just a sentence or two as to why they want to go is sufficient to make it so that the kids there actually want to be there. This has led to far superior experiences in our house - gifted program or not.

I also think there's a bit of a filtering effect as kids reach middle school due to parents realizing that when they are paying for camps, they might as well be paying for something their children are actually interested in instead of something the parents are interested in their children being interested in. Around 10-11 years old was the age my kids really started whining if they didn't want to attend certain camps I thought would be cool

polarbear

I am looking into AirCamp in Dayton OH. Does anyone have any experience with this camp. It looks pretty cool.

This should help. Lists several by state.

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

SFrog and PolarBear -- my dc did the junior CTY residential camp after 6th grade (or maybe it was 5th). I am glad to hear that Intensive Studies is really high-level. Maybe the bifurcation (in older grades) into Intensive Studies and Academic Explorations helps the peer group issue. Thanks for clarifying. You've given me hope, although I don't know that I will be able to persuade dc to try again! :-)

Gf2,

Where was the course that your dc attended? I have my eye on the one at Lafayette College this summer for my dc. I want her to meet other kids like her I don't care about the classes themselves as much as the peer group. Are you saying that I really shouldn't bother? Are/were they really scraping the barrel to fill these, in your opinion?

Hi, madeinuk,

I can only speak to my dc's experience after 6th grade. Dc had scores in the CTY high honors range in verbal and math (I don't know what the CTY cutoff is, but dc had 95+percentile in both as a 6th grader on a test normed to 9th graders), and dc was excited about studying science with other smart kids. There were definitely some kids there that matched him or exceeded him in math ability, but there were also kids who, at least by their own report, had 60th percentile scores on the relevant tests. We were able to see the written work product of all the kids (posted on a website), and it was not impressive. CTY also let in a couple of 4th graders who had a hard time because they were so young -- and made it hard on those around them (not their fault, but they were needy and there wasn't all that much supervision -- just some very tired, though well-meaning college-age RAs, about one RA for 12 kids or so). So it wasn't the high point we had hoped. I know others have had better experiences. One issue, in retrospect, is that 11- and 12-year-olds may not be ready for sleepaway camp in college dorms with RA supervision. The RAs were kind and "cool" but clearly weren't parents -- they didn't "get" that you don't get to go to bed and shut your door at 11 if any of the kids are awake, homesick, crying, fighting, whatever! :-) So there was a "Lord of the Flies" dynamic at night that was hard too.

More Summer camps for gifted are being announced as the season draws near. This article by Carol Bainbridge on About.com provides several camp lists and thoughts about choosing a camp or Summer program.

The Neuroscience For Kids ( NFK ) newsletter has announced the " Bloomin' Brains " summer camp for middle school students for 2015. It is focused on neuroscience and botany.

Up until third grade, we really had very little options for local summer camps for the kids. They would go to the local YMCA or things like that. The local university would offer some science-oriented camps, which were so-so but all we could do.
Starting in fourth grade, our local community college offers accelerated summer classes for children. My older child will do it again this summer for the third summer, and our younger one will do it for the first summer.
They have to take an above grade level exam like SCAT to qualify.
They have one-week classes for 5 weeks for the younger one; five week classes for the older one. They only go 9 am-noon, so you have to drive out to the community college in the middle of the day to pick them up; no day care!
The younger one will take probably science and one math; the older one will take Algebra I and something else.
The classes are expensive ($300 per week for each) but they are really well-done and the kids love them.
Eventually, I think they will take some summer classes at Stanford, when they are in high school, to check that out.

The schools for gifted children around here all offer day camps in the summer. I just looked this morning to sign my daughter up for a Hogwarts themed week.

Are you looking for day camps or sleep away?

We have no experience with "gifted" camps, but we find it very easy to choose specialty camps that are at our kids' levels. This is because a lot of camps are mixed-age and activities are designed by level instead of by age. DS used to go to chess camps and players of similar levels would be grouped together. Same for music camps. DD was in a middle school theatre camp last summer when she just finished 3rd grade. All we did was to tell the camp coordinator about her theatre experience (which was very extensive). Academic camps such as CTY, CTD, TIP with eligibility requirements would also work well. So I suggest 1) carefully review camp descriptions and know how students are grouped; and 2) just ask the camp and see what they can arrange. I think the camps are usually much more flexible than schools.

Linking this thread to a discussion of First day of summer camp was a disaster, which contains important considerations when choosing a summer experience for a child. Also linking that thread here.

We have done the Northwestern CTD programs a few times and had mixed results. DD (7) likes the more open ended classes (e.g., planning a research station for Antarctica) because she can take the research as far as she wants and is not constrained by the curriculum.

She has not liked the more structured classes like math...they did too much repetition and did not cover material fast enough. She was the youngest in the class, but caught on the quickest and they still will not let her take a class for a higher grade level (fwiw - she consistently tests just a hair under DYS criteria).

I decided this summer to just get her a subscription to ixl...it was a lot cheaper and she is having more fun:)

We have had good luck so far this summer with DS4 and mixed age camps - he can run with the little guys and talk with the big guys.

If there is a really good gifted day camp in a different city or state it may even be worth it to build a 1-2 week vacation around this (kid(s) could go to camp and parents can have a little break?).

Difficult to imagine, but the webpage for Innovation Institute summer camp July 12, 2015 - July 24, 2015 at Belin-Blank Center, University of Iowa mentions there are still openings. Great price, too.

The Visual Arts Studio also seems to have a few spots available.

The full list of summer classes is here.

Wow. The Belin-Blank program sounds fantastic. Will have to look for it when the boys are old enough.

Here is another article on finding summer camps for gifted children: "Finding Great Summer Activities for Your Gifted Child" https://www.noodle.com/articles/finding-great-summer-activities-for-your-gifted-child

My DS7 is still on the younger end of this conversation. Sleep away camp would be a no-go for him for several reasons. So we are looking solely in our immediate area for camps that (a) are not too chaotic or loud, (b) do NOT try to do anything academic and (c) include lots of outside play time or biking.

I think I'm in the minority, but I really don't want to sign him up for academics over the summer. At the end of the school year, the kids got a a folder full of flyers about academic-type camps, and a note requesting we attempt to get our kids to read at least 20 minutes a day. HAH! In our house that would be a bare minimum, and would cause angry outbursts because DS "needs" to read. And that's academic enough for me at this point. DS desperately needs this free exploration time.

For us, then, a proxy for all the above was finding a camp that allows and even promotes playing Magic the Gathering (DS's current obsession), and also goes swimming or exploring once a day. The Magic angle at this age tends to draw in bright kids, and the "no academics" angle actually tends to keep the camp smaller/less chaotic because, well pushing academics at EVERY age is what our town is all about. Bonus - it's with the after care teachers that DS dearly loves during the school year. He's been there all summer, safe, happy, and having a real summer vacation.