Loomis Chaffee Summer Enrichment Program

Four courses a day for four weeks. The morning is writing: a writing fundamentals course and then a writing elective, with a community meeting or advisory between them. The afternoon is two electives of the student’s choosing, and the range is wide — ceramics on the wheel or by hand, drawing, painting, digital photography, robotics and coding at two levels, DNA science, evolution and genetics, forensic science, oceanography, inquiry chemistry, artificial intelligence, design thinking, entrepreneurship, futures thinking, mythology and social psychology. Courses run at two levels, one for grades seven and eight and one for grades nine and ten. Writing is deliberately the spine of the programme: the school treats it as the skill that opens every other subject, which is why no student skips it. Running underneath everything is the Best Self curriculum, and high-school-age students who have already done its first part can take the Common Good Leadership elective, which plans and leads service projects in the town of Windsor.

Tuition for the boarding programme covers the two writing courses, the two afternoon electives, the dormitory room, three meals a day, recreational athletics and the student activities programme. Travel to and from campus is arranged by the family. A separate application fee is charged once and is listed under extras; the school waives it for returning summer students, for current students of the school, and for applicants to its own academic year. A limited amount of financial aid exists, with priority to the school’s own current and incoming students, and it is requested from the Summer Programs Office rather than through the application.

Boarding students live in Richmond Hall or in Cutler Hall next door, on the school’s own campus. Dorm faculty and staff live alongside them, run the evening activities and take the nightly dorm check-in. The school does not publish room occupancy for the summer programme, so the room type on this card is a placeholder rather than a statement — ask us and we will confirm it with the school before you book.

Boarding students take three meals a day in the school dining hall, eating together as a group, and the meals are part of tuition with nothing separate to buy.

Recreation and afternoon activities begin in the late afternoon, after the second elective, and the evening carries on after dinner with dorm activities and community events led by dorm faculty and staff. Published examples are kickball and other recreational athletics, outdoor film nights in the Shultz Courtyard, evening bonfires with marshmallows, a slip-and-slide on hot afternoons, indoor games in the dormitories and a talent show at which students perform.

The campus covers three hundred acres in Windsor, Connecticut, where the Farmington river meets the Connecticut, a short way north of Hartford. The programme uses the school’s own teaching rooms, its ceramics studio, its robotics space, the dining hall, the athletic fields and the outdoor quads and courtyards; boarding students are housed in Richmond and Cutler Halls.

Four weeks is long enough to change how a student works. The programme is built for children who like learning and want more of it, and it sets them in a real boarding-school routine — morning classes, advisory, afternoon electives, recreation, dinner, dorm — with faculty who teach the same subjects during the school year. Classmates come from around the world. The school is explicit that the point is not only the coursework: the Best Self curriculum asks students to notice their own strengths and habits, and the Common Good Leadership elective turns that outward into service work in the surrounding community. Parents and students quoted by the school describe the gain as confidence — presenting in class, performing on stage, speaking up in front of people.