From left to right: Keegan Sheere, Joe Loveland, Yohan Avila, April Foley, and Sophie McKeever-Parkes at the GIV student showcase in 2013; photo by Cathy Resmer.

From left to right: Keegan Sheere, Joe Loveland, Yohan Avila, April Foley, and Sophie McKeever-Parkes at the GIV student showcase in 2013; photo by Cathy Resmer.

As the snow begins to melt, Vermont kids — and their parents — skip past spring to start thinking about the coming summer vacation.

Good news for those getting the jump on planning: Vermont is home to lots of summer camps and programs, including a few with a technology focus.

Young Hacks Academy runs weeklong day-camp sessions for kids ages 9-14 on game development, coding for beginners and learning to program with Python. The program has expanded to 17 locations this summer, including Burlington, Bennington, Hyde Park and Woodstock. Check it out here.

High schoolers looking for more advanced instruction should investigate The Governor’s Institutes of Vermont. These prestigious programs offer eight accelerated courses on college campuses geared toward highly motivated learners. Offerings this year include engineering, mathematical sciences, and information technology and digital media.

Tuition is on a sliding scale, so families pay what they can. And girls who want to enroll in these STEM-related institutes are eligible for big discounts thanks to an EPSCoR grant. The deadline to apply is April 1.

What’s life like at GIV? Here’s a Tech Jam blog post from 2013 that offers a glimpse. Sophie McKeever-Parkes, a Middlebury High School student at the time, told us, “I know it was going to be fun, but I didn’t know it was going to be this much fun.”