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Camps

A week they will measure the rest of the summer against.

Camps we run, with our instructors, every year — in person here in Laurel or live online if you are too far to drive. Six themes, built on the same work we design for schools, taught the way we would want our own children taught.

Put us on the list See the six camps
About a dozen campers crowded together for a photograph in a busy makerspace, nearly every one of them holding up the small cardboard machine they built, all of them grinning at the camera.
Day three. Nobody has asked what time it is.

First, the thing people get wrong

This is the camp. The box is something else.

A camp is a week we run. Camp TO GO is a kit you run.

Same themes, same activities, completely different purchase. If you want us to take your child for a week, you are in the right place. If you run a program yourself and want the materials and the plan to deliver it, that is Camp TO GO, and it is a box rather than a booking. Confusing the two is the single easiest mistake to make on this site, so we would rather say it before anything else.

A camp, from us

Our instructors, our materials, a fixed week. Your camper turns up and we do the rest. This page.

A kit, for you

Everything needed to run the same activities yourself, whenever suits you. Camp TO GO in the shop.

The six

Six camps, and they are genuinely different weeks.

Not one camp with six coats of paint. Each one has its own materials, its own arc and its own kind of child who falls in love with it — which is why we keep running all six.

NASA ASTRO CAMP®

Space and engineering

Real NASA-inspired challenges, developed with the NASA ASTRO CAMP® Community Partners Program. Campers design, test and refine prototypes, and meet the careers behind space science.

The one most campers have heard of, and the one most of them come back for.

Around the Neighborhood with Evo

Coding and community

Built with Ozobot. Campers program the Evo robot through the familiar places of a town and discover the real jobs that happen in each of them — computational thinking attached to somewhere they already know.

Good for a camper who likes screens and has never been shown what to do with one.

Hands-On Literacy

Reading and building

Standards-aligned projects that grow foundational literacy and STEM skills at the same time. For campers who have decided they are “not a reader” and have not yet been given a reason to reconsider.

The quiet giant. It changes more minds than any other week we run.

Future of Energy

Sustainability

Renewable energy and sustainable technology: investigating ecosystems, uncovering the chemistry behind everyday products, and seeing how the resources that power a house actually get there.

The week that produces the most arguments at the dinner table afterwards.

Careers in STEM

What the jobs are

Life science, physical science, Earth and space science and engineering, each attached to the real work somebody does for a living. The point is not the activity; it is that a child sees a job they did not know existed.

Best for campers old enough to be asked what they want to do and tired of the question.

Urban Ecology Camp

Outside

Field studies in the landscape the campers actually live in. Hands and knees, collection jars, the discovery that the patch of ground behind the building is full of things.

The one that sends a camper home muddy and talking.

What a week looks like

Every day ends with something in their hands.

The shape comes from NASA ASTRO CAMP®, which we have run longer than anything else, and it holds for all six.

  1. A challenge, not a lessonEach day opens with a problem nobody in the room can solve yet. That is the point. What follows is an attempt, not an explanation.
  2. They build it wrong firstPrototypes fail. They get taken apart and rebuilt, usually more than once. The second version is where the learning is, and campers who are used to getting things right first time find this week genuinely hard and genuinely good for them.
  3. They explain it to somebodyEvery camper has to say what they did and why it worked. It is the fastest way to find out whether they understood it, and the fastest way to make them understand it.
  4. It ends with the real thingA working build, a field study, a presentation. Something that exists at the end of the week that did not exist at the start.
  5. They take it homeWhatever they made comes with them. So does the habit, if we have done it right.
A girl tips her head back to launch a small paper rocket with a puff of breath, while behind her the rest of the crew works on their own builds and an adult moves between the desks rather than standing at the front.

Nobody sits and watches. If your camper is the shy one, they will be building within ten minutes, because everybody is.

Two ways to come

In person in Laurel, or live online.

The online camp is not a lesser version. It exists because we have one building and families are not all within driving distance of it, and it is taught live by the same instructors.

Two brothers in NASA shirts working the same activity at the family dining table, each with a tablet propped in front of them for the live session, the kit materials and the printed guide spread out between them.
The online week, at a kitchen table. Same materials, same instructor, same builds.

In person

A week in our building, with more room and more equipment than a camp in a hall can offer. Drop-off and pick-up, the whole day, the mess is ours.

Live online

Materials ship to your house before the camp starts. A real instructor runs each session live, watching what your camper is building and answering them by name.

Same instructors

The people teaching the online week are the people teaching the in-person one. It is not a recording and it is not a stand-in.

Same things made

An online camper finishes the week with the same builds on the same table. What changes is the room, not the work.

Who comes

One camper, or a whole group.

Most of the people on this page are parents booking one child. Some are not, and both are welcome — a scout troop, a homeschool co-op or a school running an enrichment week all fit the same camp.

PreKWith a grown-up
K–2Early elementary
3–5Upper elementary
6–8Middle
9–12High school

Who books these camps

  • Parents, for one camper
  • Parents, for siblings at different ages
  • Homeschool groups and co-ops
  • Scouting and youth organizations
  • Schools running an enrichment week
  • Libraries and community programs
  • Churches and civic groups
  • Employers running a family day
  • Grandparents, more often than you would think
About thirty campers and two teenage helpers lined up for a group photograph at the end of a camp, everyone in the same white NASA ASTRO CAMP shirt with its round mission patch.
The last day. This is the one that ends up on a fridge.

Access, before you have to ask

Tell us what your camper needs and we will build the week around it rather than around an average. Seated alternatives, a quieter station, larger print on the instructions, a shorter day for a child who cannot sustain a full one, a familiar adult in the room — none of that is a special arrangement, it is just planning, and it works far better when we know before the week than when we find out on the Tuesday.

What parents ask

The four questions we get every year.

Does my child need to be good at science?

No, and the campers who get the most out of a week are routinely the ones nobody expected to. We are not looking for the child who already knows the answer.

What do they need to bring?

Themselves and clothes that can get wrecked. Everything else is ours, including the materials they take home.

What if they already did this camp?

Tell us. We will put them on a different one, or give them a harder version of the same build — what we will not do is charge you for the week they already had.

My child is nervous. Will that be a problem?

It is the most common thing anybody writes in the last box of the form, and it is the one we are best at. Say so and we will watch for them on the first morning.

What we cannot tell you yet

The dates. The calendar for this year is still being finalized, and we would rather say that plainly than put up a schedule we have to change. Everything else on this page is settled — the camps, the two formats, how a week runs. Put your name on the list below and a person will write to you with the dates for the camp you picked as soon as they exist.

Register your interest

Tell us who is coming, and we will tell you when.

This puts you on the list rather than holding a place — nothing is booked and nothing is paid, because the dates are not set yet. When they are, you hear first and you decide then.

Camp registration enquiry

The last question is the one we read most carefully.

The camp calendar is still being finalized, so this puts you on the list rather than holding a place — nothing is booked and nothing is paid. A person here in Laurel, Mississippi will write back with the dates for the camp you picked as soon as they are set, and you decide then. We use what you send to answer you and nothing else.

Would rather talk it through? Call 866-381-1760.

Ask them about it in October.

That is the real test of a camp, and it is the one we build for. Not whether they enjoyed the week — whether they are still doing something because of it four months later.

Put us on the list See the six camps

In person in Laurel, or live online with the materials shipped to you. Dates as soon as they are set.

Central Creativity — Laurel, Mississippi. 866-381-1760.