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在好莱坞特技夏令营里表演特技

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Rehearsing lines for acting camp.

Learning to drive a race car or jump off a building like a Hollywood stunt performer at summer camp may sound a bit bizarre, but more U.S. teenagers are attending specialty camps that focus on such offbeat experiences.

Every summer, about 11 million children in the U.S. attend primarily coed camps that last from three days to eight weeks, according to the American Camp Association (ACA). The majority of campers engage in such traditional activities as arts and crafts, swimming and nature hikes. But due to recent tastes for more exotic or educational experiences, about half of the 2,600 camps affiliated with ACA now offer some type of specialty program.

“[Teens] today tend to collect a ‘menu’ of activities,” said ACA chief executive Peg Smith. “They like to try different things.” She said some are building their résumés, in hopes of boosting their chances of acceptance by a top-tier college.

Such opportunities are not limited to the wealthy. In fact, the majority of campers come from middle- and low-income families. Camps of all sorts offer scholarships or discounts to families that cannot afford the fees. A number of church organizations, charities and foundations support camps specifically for underprivileged teens.

At camps with an educational focus, campers can build a robot, design a building, create a computer game, learn to draw or paint, immerse themselves in another language or participate in an archaeological dig. Academic camps target instruction to specific groups, such as gifted and talented youth, kids struggling to improve their grades or those with intellectual challenges.

“More than 40 percent of our camps work directly or indirectly with schools because learning is year-round,” said Smith. “There’s a great quote that says, ‘Fun is the feeling you get when you’re learning,’ and camp is a perfect model for that.”

 

Large camps offer an impressive array of choices for fun and learning. At Pali Adventures, a coed residential camp in the mountains of Southern California, campers aged 9 to 16 can choose among 18 avocations, from action sports — such as rope courses, mountain biking or water skiing — to learning to be a disc jockey, rock musician, fashion designer or movie-makeup artist.

Some ambitious campers value the skill development acquired through specialties like culinary camp or filmmaking, according to Ian Brassett, general manager at Pali Adventures. “But some of our camps are just plain fun.”

While many specialty camps are offered in traditional sleepover camp settings, such as Pali’s, others take place at schools, universities and museums. For more than 30 years, the U.S. Rocket and Space Center, a museum in Huntsville, Alabama, has offered a Space Camp, at which campers train as astronauts in simulated space missions. Camp BizSmart, based at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, offers teenagers the opportunity to work with corporate professionals to solve actual business problems and design new products.

The last five years have seen a different trend — a growing demand for camps with a more down-to-earth focus, such as cooking, organic gardening and animal care — said the ACA’s Smith. Even with all the specialty options, old-fashioned cabins, campfires and crafts still have appeal, she said.

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Something for Everyone

• Camp Jam — Would-be rock stars learn from professional musicians.
• Camp Motorsport — Drivers get behind the wheels of scaled-down race cars.
• Circus Camp — Campers practice juggling, clowning and swinging on a trapeze.
• Camp Kids ’N Comedy — “We promise not to make you paddle any canoes,” advertises this indoor camp, based at a comedy club in New York City.
• Shark Camp — Teens certified in scuba diving travel to Fiji to dive with wild sharks.
• Tall Ship Camp — At sea, campers learn to sail and perform shipboard duties, from captain to cook.