Junior Great Books at Colby College - 2024 - is not currently active
Due to Covid, there will be no Junior Great Books at Colby this summer.
The Junior Program
How is the Great Books camp for kids at Colby different from other camps?
The way it integrates fun with learning.
Camps are places where kids go to have fun and enjoy a change of scenery. But learning or honing skills is also a focus of most camps. Some camps are devoted to learning such as music camps, or art or athletic camps and more.
The Great Books Camp for Kids helps children improve their ability to think critically, teaches them how to frame and ask questions, and exposes them to a higher level of interaction with their peers. The kids have fun in the process because the lessons are in the context of their group’s discussion of the stories they are reading.
In every sense that's exactly what Great Books at Colby is about for adults.
The key to that part of their experience is called "Shared Inquiry", a process as old as Socrates and as new as the most up to date learning environments today. You can read how that process works elsewhere on this site.
In short, it's an activity that facilitates an exchange of ideas and different perspectives. Within the discussions of a book and the assessments of the stories, an individual of any age will learn from peers and their own shared experiences. And that's just plain fun because of the way it's done.
The end of all this—just like the experiences of their parents, the children’s brains somehow feel expanded, ways of thinking are honed, and lifetime friendships may be created.
Great Books Camp for Kids at Colby affords unique moments of personal growth that can be recreated year after year on the campus of a lovely college in Maine.
Come join us. And bring the kids.
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