"Parents seek out the best coaches and finest musical instruments for their kids," she said. "Increasingly, they give children's financial development a similar level of intention and support."
Business camps are usually priced similarly to other day camps -- which makes perfect sense as the business-minded camp directors look at the competition. The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, however, is running 10 one-week camps this summer in the northeast for children from low-income families, who pay no tuition. Sponsors like Goldman Sachs help pay the bill.
The foundation's camps focus on teaching 11 to 18-year-olds how to start a business.
"We use the idea of running a business to get kids excited about the topic of money," said its founder, Steve Mariotti. "So when you start to teach them about personal budgeting, they see there's a reason for it, and pay more attention."
Eschewing poison ivy for ivy-covered walls, some business camps are held on college campuses. Middle schoolers at an entrepreneur camp held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison ended their week with their own business plan and a stack of laser-printed business cards.
Another program, Camp $tart-Up, is for students aged 14 to 19 and goes beyond marketing plans to the more subtle arts of professional success, including business etiquette and golf lessons. The camp, run by Independent Means, is in a different site each year, and this summer was held on the Cornell University campus, in Ithaca, New York.
For high school juniors and seniors, Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts, offers a one-week summer residential program called Wall Street 101. A simulated trading room lets students try their hand buying and selling on world financial markets.
While the surfeit of new camp offerings may be enticing to children and parents, they do represent a change in what summertime means for US youngsters. Summer used to be more unstructured, and child development experts like Alvin Rosenfeld, co-author of The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap, advises parents to give children plenty of free time when school is not in session.
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