Summer is rearing its warm, beautiful head and if you've got kids in school that means you may be stressing right now. After you’ve failed at all of your saved Pinterest projects, paper mache solar systems and Twilight Tunes ends, you realize that eight weeks of summer is a lot of time to fill with "funtivities." A Denton summer camp just might be the answer to some of your problems and your child is guaranteed to have a blast, too. Below, we've compiled seven of our favorite local camps. Check 'em out and share your favorite in the comments.
Make everything awesome by enrolling your little one into this STEM-heavy Lego camp. Build things like race cars and buildings in teams and individuals. The classes are held at North Lakes Recreation Center on Windsor. Play-Well offers multiple classes at various times throughout the summer.
Summit Gym on Oak St. near the Denton square is offering weekly summer camps that go on for the whole summer. Camps are all Monday through Friday from 9am - 1pm. Activities focus on various aspects of climbing. Each week is $199 per child.
TWU offers summer camps for both teens and adults throughout June and July. Camps vary widely on their subjects, ranging from art, science, fashion, nutrition, dance writing, gymnastics, and a whole lot more. Additionally, TWU offers speech, language, and hearing focused summer camps for impaired learners of multiple age groups.
Several of the Denton ISD high schools have summer camps that raise money for a few of their sports teams. We've checked out the basketball camps before and they're a great bang for you buck. Aside from the T-shirt and basketball, students get an four day, intensive lesson on specific aspects of a sport. For instance, in the basketball camp, students will focus on drilling one day and shooting the next. Both Ryan High School and Guyer High School offer basketball camps. Guyer also offers a soccer camp and word on the street is that DHS has a pole vaulting class, too, if that's what you're into. The sites can be a tad difficult to navigate so refresh your boolean search knowledge before looking for a specific class.
Camp SCRAP is a week long art camp for kids ages 6-12. Campers explore the possibilities of discarded materials in the world around us, play games, try experiments, and make useful projects infused with their own artistic ideas. Camp SCRAP is centered on themes of creative reuse and making the most of your materials.
Denton Community Theatre’s Summer Creativity Class
The creative minds behind DCT are welcoming youngin’s into their new Blackbox Theatre once more this year. DCT’s Summer Creativity Class focuses on Lion King Jr this year. Classes are available for children aged 4 - 18. There are multiple classes available throughout the summer. Some work towards putting together their summer musical, too.
Center for Ballet Arts Summer Camp
Got a young one interested in ballet? The Center for Ballet Arts (off of Brinker) offers a couple of camps that may be of interest to ya. The CBA brings in "master guest teachers" from distinguished venues. Instruction focuses primarily on classical ballet technique, but also touches upon other topics such as acrobatics and aerial flying.
Denton ISD's Advanced Technology Complex offers an annual robotics-focused summer camp every year. This year's camp is open to students entering 3rd - 7th grades. Students will complete various projects over the course of the week such as WeDo Legos, Dash, Vex, and other robotics-centered activities. The camp runs from July 12th through the 15th and is $75.
UNT’s Elm Fork’s Explorers Camp
UNT has plenty of classes for your budding anthropologists with their Explorer’s Camp. All classes are based out of the Environmental Sciences building and deal with the study/exploration of nature at some level. There are lots of diverse options for students of all ages. Class topics range from water to macroscopic transformations of various forms of matter. Yes, seriously.
UNT's School of Music offers a wide variety of classes for children of all ages in their summer camps. Instruction is focused on topics such as jazz, strings, woodwinds, voice, conducting and much more (check out the full list here). Additionally, some camps allow students to perform in concerts throughout the summer.
Denton Music Workshop has been known to hold summer camps at their facility near the Denton square. While they don't have any info available to the public at the time of this writing, you can always stick to their website or Facebook page and wait and see.
City of Denton's Summer Camps and Trips
The City of Denton Parks Dept. also offers plenty of different camps or daytime activities for your son or daughter. While their website and payment method is a little convoluted, we've participated in a couple of these classes before and they were great. We especially like the crew over at the North Lakes Rec Center. There's a great variety of classes for kids of all ages. Aside from the normal sport-centric activities, they have pre-engineering classes for kids around six years of age and classes that feature topics such as movie making and video game design for teens aged 10 - 17. Whatever their interests may be, the city has something to offer.
No, we didn't forget about GDAC's summer art classes. Sadly, due to construction, they won't be offering classes this year. You can rest assured they'll be back with some great art-focused summer camps in 2018, though.