Camp - It's Not Just For Little Kids

We held our Summer Camps & Activities Fair in April and nearly 3,000 people came to see the 93 booths we had representing camps, birthday party venues, schools, health care professionals and more.

 As they were leaving, parent after parent told us how excited they were to find new camp programs for their kids. Most of these parents had preschoolers or elementary-aged kids.

What we don’t see a lot of at our Camp Fair is middle and high school students looking for summer programs and that’s a shame. It’s really too bad because as we gather all the information we can find about camps in the Bluegrass for both our April and May issues, we find dozens of great opportunities for kids in the 12 and older age bracket.

We’ve been putting together our Camp Directory for 16 years now and one of the trends I’ve seen grow just in the last few years is colleges and universities offering programs for middle and high schoolers to give them a week or two living on campus trying out some of the programs the college offers.

Take a look at what Asbury is offering this summer. They have nine, five day, overnight, college-like experiences for high school students that include all food, housing, equipment, and evening activities. Older kids can explore equine, film worship arts/audio production themed programs as well as creative writing, film, environmental science, theatre and music.

Midway College offers day camp opportunities for girls up to 14 years old including their famous “Between the Ears” equine camp, plus the Girl Power camp for ages 6-12, and co-ed camps for writing art, exploring the out-of-doors and science.

Speaking of science, Newton’s Attic has hands-on science and engineering camps for kids from 6-18. Learn robotics, create wrestling robots, make a catapult and other ingenious mechanisms and even a bow like Katniss’.

Local private schools like Seton Catholic and Sayre have program of interest middle schoolers as well as younger kids. Learn interactive web programming at Seton and a whole variety of things like horseback riding and chess at Sayre.

For kids with an interest in the arts there are a whole slew of programs for teens. Broadway Bound Summer Camps offer programs for singers and actors and the Lexington Children’s Theatre and Camp Shakespeare also offers acting camps all summer. Kentucky Mudworks and The Mad Potter hands-on clay and ceramic camps for all ages (even grown-ups). The Living Arts & Science Center has programs that also go all the way up to the teen years. Lexington Music Education can put your teen in a rock band this summer. Morehead State University also has a summer arts program for high schoolers.

For teens with special needs check out Central Kentucky Riding for Hope, Parks & Rec’s Therapeutic Recreation Fun Camps and Seton Catholic’s All Abilities Drama Camp.

For teens interested in sports check out some of the residential sports programs at Central Kentucky colleges and universities. UK, Transy, Midway, Asbury and Morehead State all offer them.

Whatever their interests, your teens have NOT outgrown camp yet, and while they may be holding down jobs this summer, a week or a few days of summer camp might be just as beneficial to them as money.