Surprising Summer Activities for Kids

Looking for ideas on summer activities for your kids? How about summer camp? How about academic summer camps? Before you dismiss the idea as quickly as you think your son or daughter might, consider SuperCamp.

SuperCamp is an academic summer camp with a twist. It begins with the belief that learning can and should be fun. The curriculum of its 10-day youth and teen summer camps is a precisely orchestrated combination of three elements: academic skills, physical achievements and life skills.

Many of the kids who attend SuperCamp for the first time aren’t happy about the idea of going. Naturally, they have the stereotypical perception of what an academic summer camp is like. But as soon as they arrive at SuperCamp, which is held on college campuses across the U.S., they know they’re in for something different.

Bobbi DePorter, SuperCamp’s co-founder and president describes SuperCamp as "a high energy, engaging experience." To say the least. The camp’s highly-trained staff creates an environment of non-stop action from sun up to lights out.

Physical challenges are used as metaphors for learning breakthroughs – paradigm shifts that change the understanding of learning. One of the physical challenges is a ropes course that has students climbing trees, tightrope walking forty feet in the air, leaping from a tiny platform atop a tall pole to catch a trapeze and falling backward from the top of a ladder into the arms of waiting team members.

Every student succeeds and the high that this success brings is transferred directly into the classroom, where they find they can be just as successful. As a result of this one activity, learning breakthroughs occur by the hundreds every summer at SuperCamp.

SuperCamp has graduated over 55,000 students worldwide in almost 30 years. This summer camps are offered at Stanford University, Brown, Loyola Marymount in the Los Angeles area, Cal State San Marcos in north San Diego County, Colorado College in Colorado Springs, the University of Washington in Seattle, Wake Forest University and Lake Forest in Chicago.

SuperCamp runs three grade-specific programs: a 10-day Junior Forum for students entering grades 6-8 in the fall, a 10-day Senior Forum for students entering grades 9-12, and Quantum U, an 8-day college bootcamp for incoming college students.