Everything You Need to Know About Virtual Summer Camps

July 17, 2025 by Valerie Kirk

4 min to read

An online high school student socializing with four other students online

Summer is just around the corner! While families eagerly anticipate summer vacations and spending time at the pool or the park, many are looking into summer camps to help keep their kids active and engaged during the long summer months. With the wide range of camps available, including educational summer camps and sports camps, kids can explore new topics, improve specialized skills, and make new friends.

But with busy summer schedules, in-person summer camps with strict start and end times can be a challenge. Families looking for more flexible options may want to consider virtual summer camps.

How Do Virtual Summer Camps Work?

Virtual summer camps offer the flexibility that busy families are looking for. In a virtual summer camp, students aren’t tied to a physical location — they can attend anywhere they have an internet connection — or a strict time schedule.

The camp’s live virtual sessions, which are typically held each week, are recorded. Students can attend the live sessions that fit into their schedule or listen to the recordings so they can still participate. The sessions are typically run by virtual teachers, who guide students through camp activities.

This flexibility helps families have summer family time and keep summer traditions. Families can enroll students in online summer camp for the entire month of July for specific days or weeks.

What Do Kids Do in Virtual Summer Camp?

Students in online summer camps connect with other campers virtually and do fun, interactive things together, helping them engage with their peers and make fast friends.

Virtual summer camps often offer a wide variety of activities and experiences. Some camps focus on specific activities, such as Esports, while others follow weekly themes and offer different activities, including:

Arts and crafts
Virtual field trips to museums or art institutes
Online interactive games, such as chess
Book clubs
Dance parties
Virtual travel, where campers virtually explore different places around the world

Connections Academy’s Virtual Summer Camps

For 2025, Connections Academy offers four online summer camps:

Club Safari camp for students in PreK – 5th grade
Club Safari camp for student in 6th – 12th grade
Esports for middle schoolers
Esports for high schoolers

The Club Safari summer camp meets every Tuesday and Thursday over the summer for live, virtual camp sessions. Each session will have different activities based on a session theme, but all the activities are educational, helping students enhance their knowledge and skills in a fun camp environment — and avoid summer learning loss.

Club Safari campers often do science experiments, learn how to create an animation through coding, travel virtually to fun locations, and learn about photography. Older campers get to stretch their creativity and presentation skills through activities like developing business pitches.

These camps are free for Connections Academy students. Caregivers can learn more about the camps and enroll their student at connectionsclubsandactivities.com/homesummer.

Is Virtual Summer Camp Right for My Child?

If you want to keep your child engaged in fun activities this summer but are concerned about strict camp schedules, then a virtual summer camp could be the perfect fit for your family!

Enrolling your student in summer camp can also help avoid summer learning loss, often referred to as summer slide. While studies vary as to kids lose over the summer, most academic experts to keep their skills sharp and avoid the summer slide.

Summer camps also teach kids soft skills that can help them throughout their lives, including teamwork, problem solving, and leadership skills. They can also help kids stay on a daily schedule or routine over the summer, which can ease the transition back to school in the fall.

Summer Camp or Summer School?

If you are looking for a more structured educational experience for your student this summer, consider summer school. Pearson Online Academy, an online private school, offers a summer school program designed for students in grades K–12 with courses on a wide range of subjects taught by qualified teachers.

Explore the hundreds of Pearson Online Academy’s course offerings to find the right summer classes to keep your student learning over the summer.

Whether you choose summer school or summer camp, virtual summer programs can be great options to keep your student engaged and learning this summer while having fun!