Summer Camp for Gifted Children

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - July 7th, 2013

Raising a gifted child presents some unique challenges, one of which is: should they go to summer camp? If so, is a “normal” camp OK, or are there special summer camps out there for gifted children? Today I want to share my experience with you.

The summer before our daughter began pre-school, I started purchasing some great workbooks, including Summer Bridge Activities  and School Zone, for summer learning. I usually bought them one grade ahead to challenge her. Raising a gifted child requires some creativity in ensuring she is not bored. The books incorporated different daily subjects and activities to do at home. As a bonus, these workbooks have a recommended reading list, so it was nice to find some new authors/books when she was younger. As she got older, I added math workbooks to the learning books to address any skills she needed to sharpen.

As she and her cousins got older, they began attending summer camps together.  Now, every spring, my sister and I begin looking for fun day camps and activities. My sister has two daughters who are in close age range to my daughter, so we usually try to enroll them together with at least some of them. We decided to hire a math tutor last summer to help our daughter transition into third grade with confidence of command in fourth and fifth grade level mathematic concepts. We feel so fortunate to have found an experienced, creative and fun math tutor who doesn’t break the bank! Having the tutoring for two hours a week last summer made a tremendous difference. She also took a camp that incorporated writing, storytelling and cooking, that has been one of her favorites.

This summer we found some one-week camps that each focus on a certain topic. I let our daughter choose three, and was impressed with her selections! The camps are: Minecraft, Ancient Egypt, and LEGOS Robotics. We found an experienced Spanish teacher who is going to incorporate food, art, and cultures into her lessons in our home. Lastly, we are hiring last summer’s awesome math tutor again.

And of course, while learning is important, kids still need to have lots of fun! In the past five summers, our daughter has taken swimming, and tumbling, and soccer camps. She has a creative side, so she took art classes, clay, and pottery camps. What has helped thwart any boredom is finding the right combination of fun activities.  Incorporating interactive learning camps to sharpen grade level skills in reading, writing, mathematics has helped prevent “summer slide” or “brain drain”.

Finally, our daughter has been attending summer art classes in a wonderful studio the last four years. She has learned the fundamentals of art with different kinds of media, and clay sculpting and pottery wheel clay camps.  The best reward at the end of the summer is having a very happy child eager to start the school year.