Cognitive depth
Above-grade-level work in a primary discipline plus daily interdisciplinary problem-solving. The kind of intellectual challenge gifted learners are ready for and rarely receive.
Summer Enrichment for Bright Young Navigators
The North Star points the way home. We help your child find theirs.
A two-week summer expedition for gifted elementary learners. Above-grade-level depth, social-emotional belonging, and the original work that comes from being taken seriously.
The Polaris Promise
Three commitments, every single day
Affective belonging
Cohorts of twelve. Daily reflection time. Mentors trained in the social-emotional needs of gifted children. Your Navigator will not be the only one who thinks the way they think.
Original voice
Every Navigator carries a passion project across the two weeks and presents it at Polaris Night. Real audience, real work, their choice of subject.
A glimpse
What a morning looks like
By 9 AM your Navigator is inside their primary Constellation, working at depth with a mentor who treats their thinking seriously. By 11 they are in Crossings, building something with peers from every other discipline. By the end of the day they have written, made, argued, and rested. Then they come home and tell you about it.
See the full Voyage The Six Constellations
Six interdisciplinary strands
Each Navigator chooses a primary Constellation for their two-week deep dive, and rotates through the others during Crossings, our daily interdisciplinary block.
Lyra
Arts & Storytelling
For parents
Narrative, music, visual art, and performance treated as serious disciplines. Mentors guide craft from first draft to live audience, with attention to voice, structure, and the courage to share work in progress.
For your Navigator
Tell stories that haven't been told. Make pictures, songs, and characters that feel like yours. Then put them in front of an audience that actually listens.
Orion
Engineering & Design
For parents
Hands-on engineering and design with real materials and real constraints. Navigators learn iteration, testing, and the discipline of making, not just imagining, their ideas.
For your Navigator
Build things that hold weight, light up, fly, or move. Take them apart. Make them better. Then build something only you would have thought of.
Cassiopeia
Mathematics & Pattern
For parents
Number theory, combinatorial play, logic, and beginning code, pitched well above standard grade level. Emphasis on conjecture, proof, and the joy of pattern.
For your Navigator
Find the rules hiding inside puzzles, games, and codes. Invent your own. Trade them with friends and watch what happens.
Andromeda
Sciences & Systems
For parents
Life sciences, chemistry, ecology, and astronomy taught as inquiry, not vocabulary memorization. Navigators design and run their own investigations with mentor support.
For your Navigator
Watch real living things, real chemicals, real weather. Ask the questions that nobody answered yet. Run an experiment to find out.
Aquila
Philosophy & Civic Voice
For parents
Ethics, debate, civic design, and world cultures. Polaris's answer to gifted learners' early hunger for meaning, justice, and big-picture questions, held in a structured, age-appropriate way.
For your Navigator
Argue about big questions: what is fair, what is real, what should we do? Listen to people who disagree with you. Change your mind sometimes.
Phoenix
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
For parents
Design thinking and social-impact entrepreneurship. Navigators move from problem-finding through prototyping to a real pitch: the long-form Type III work pattern, applied to a problem they choose.
For your Navigator
Find a real problem you actually care about. Invent something (a product, a service, a campaign) that helps fix it. Pitch it to people who could make it real.
Charting your course starts here
Rolling admissions November through April. Priority deadline February 1. The Compass Fund supports families for whom cost is a barrier; apply on the same form as everyone else.