Some school districts offer CTE camps and your local high school might have sports camps. My 8th grader is traveling for 3 total weeks, doing an evening sports camp at the high school one week, and a CTE camp another week. That leaves four weeks for her to do what she wants, spend time with friends, go to the pool, whatever. The key is you have to put screentime limits on the device, because you don't want free time to turn into hours on YouTube. And you don't want to be the one policing it all the time.

8th graders can stay home.

When my kids were that age, I worked full-time and went to college full-time and what I did was I bought them a season pass to the waterworks park near our house and at lunch I would go and pick them up and take them to the waterworks park and drop them off on my way back to work after lunch and then after work, I would pick them back up. There was supervision inside the park and they were teenagers so they didn’t need to be babysat. One of mine eventually got a job inside the park and the other one had all her friends there all the time so she was in heaven so you might want to look at what options are available in your area.

Sleepaway, visit relatives, loll about reading. I also try to get things like braces, new eyeglasses, etc. done over the summer.

My kids did some overnight camp at that age. They also took a Robotics class at the local community college and spent time at the pool. Lots of community colleges have fun classes for that age group in the summer and they aren't too expensive.

Anonymous wrote:Speciality camps at that age.

+1.

This is when the cheap summer camps end and the expensive ones begin.

That’s the age when my son and all his friends stayed home for the summer. They house hopped and entertained themselves. Basketball at one house, video games at another, then a mom will take the crew to Dave and busters, another may take them to the pool, etc. I take them to six flags. Nothing planned but lots of fun activities.

Summer at Potomac also goes older.

Weight Train.

Mow lawns for $$$

Wash cars for $$$

Go fishing.

^she can bike back and forth to the pool, which is very helpful.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's when the good sleepaway camps start!

No, the good ones start at 8 years old.

Our kids will hopefully continue to go to their camp through summer going into junior year. It’s a trip focused camp that gets progressively more challenging each year ending with a 21 day hike on the Appalachian trail.

That sounds great. Which camp is that?

Kieve in Maine.

Sports camps if they are into a sport. Mine is going to one sleep away for a week at a college and daily camps for her sport for two other weeks. The rest of the summer will be spent lounging at the pool with friends and spending two different weeks visiting grandparents. We will take off some time too but mostly, she wants the down time to meet up with others at the pool.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's when the good sleepaway camps start!

No, the good ones start at 8 years old.

Our kids will hopefully continue to go to their camp through summer going into junior year. It’s a trip focused camp that gets progressively more challenging each year ending with a 21 day hike on the Appalachian trail.

That sounds great. Which camp is that?

Anonymous wrote:That's when the good sleepaway camps start!

No, the good ones start at 8 years old.

Our kids will hopefully continue to go to their camp through summer going into junior year. It’s a trip focused camp that gets progressively more challenging each year ending with a 21 day hike on the Appalachian trail.