Send your kid to the Swiss Alps in summer

Tucked neatly into the Swiss Alps, sitting at around 1,300 metres (4,265 feet) above sea level less than 15 kilometres from the France border, a former tuberculosis sanatorium now houses 80 or so grade 12 students from some 55 countries during the academic year. But they’re not the only students at Leysin American School (LAS) — and the school year isn’t the only program available to international students. Enter “Summer in Switzerland,” where you can send your kid to the Swiss Alps in summer for the most magical adventure. As long as they’re between 9 and 16 years old, that is.

This past summer, between her Grade 9 and 10 school years, Miss Q attended the Summer in Switzerland at LAS program. Its tagline? The summer of a lifetime. And for the many Swiss Francs it costs, it had better be. 

With some of the cleanest air in Europe, Leysin offers something most other summer “camp” programs cannot: a mountaintop experience with contained independence in one of the safest villages in Switzerland. Perhaps one of the safest in the world.

A youth camp set amidst the Swiss Alps in summer

If you grew up like me, in a working-class family in small-town Canada where “summer camp” meant heading to a day camp at the Boys & Girls’  Club or — if you were lucky — an overnight camp with the Girl Guides, the idea of jetting off to the Swiss Alps in summer is about as foreign as it gets. But, as parents, I think we all strive to give our kids experiences that we couldn’t have imagined for ourselves and, this past summer, Miss Q was the fortunate recipient of an invitation to spend three weeks at Leysin American School in Switzerland to experience its world-class summer program.

It’s the kind of “summer camp” I could have never even imagined had I not seen it with my own eyes — and that’s coming from someone who spent two summers during university working at an elite summer camp in Ontario’s Haliburton Highlands, where some parents arrived by seaplane on visitors’ day.

And while it caters primarily to kids and teens from upper-echelon families, if you’re not wealthy don’t count it out just yet because your kid may qualify for a scholarship. Yes — even for summer camp. So, keep reading.

This post has everything you need to know about sending your 9-to-16-year-olds to the LAS Summer in Switzerland program, including:

• More info about Leysin
• A brief history of LAS
• Parent communication
• Staff + teachers
• Dorms
• Phone policy
• Food
• Programs, clubs + activities
• Health Centre
• Adjustment period 
• Registration, cost + scholarships

About Leysin

There are about 4,000 full-time residents in Leysin, a tiny ski town in the Vaud canton near the Swiss Riviera high above the Rhône Valley. Accessible by cogwheel train — part of the the interconnected Swiss travel system — you pass a castle, some vineyards and quintessential Swiss homes as the train hugs the mountain and climbs. It is a dreamscape all the way to the top.

Known for year-round mountain sports and experiences, the village has a couple of flower shops, a grocery store, post office, souvenir shop, real estate office, some restaurants, a coffee shop and a few glacier-fed water fountains. 

There are no street lights. There’s no police station. I didn’t even see a stop sign as I wandered about town.

It’s also home to the Berneuse, a soaring 2,045-metre (6,709 feet) mountain, which you can reach via cable car from Leysin’s village, as well two best-in-class recreation centres that house four seasons’ worth of activities, including but hardly limited to: ice hockey, swimming, beach volleyball, football (soccer), tennis, indoor climbing, squash, curling and more. LAS campers have access to it all.

A brief history of Leysin American School in Switzerland

From the heart of the village, you walk about a kilometre-and a-half up a narrow, winding road to find the Leysin American School campus. Far enough from town that it feels removed from village life — isolated from traffic, tourists and most of the locals — but close enough that the older kids are permitted some freedom away from campus that might otherwise not be safe, even in other parts of Switzerland (already considered an overwhelmingly safe country).

Three generations of the Ott family — who started LAS in 1949 as a summer camp to connect students across cultures, religions and political divides following World War II — have, and continue to, run this private boarding school in the Swiss Alps. In later years, LAS evolved from a summer-only program to full-year academia and now hosts students for all but a couple of weeks each year.

It gets the “American” in its name only because it follows the best of the American educational curriculum, featuring the challenging International Baccalaureate (IB) and Advanced Placement (AP) educational programs; LAS is, otherwise, an international school that operates mainly in English with Swiss precision.

The campus welcomes about 300 students from around the world from September to June, but shrinks to half of that in July and August when it becomes a magical summer camp to two different cohorts of students from dozens of countries. They enjoy three-week stints in this fully boarded hybrid program that features a seven-day-a-week calendar filled with education, activities galore and enriching social experiences. Think of it as an all-inclusive resort where parents aren’t allowed.

Parent communication

Once you’ve enrolled your child(ren) in LAS’s Summer in Switzerland program (more on that later), parent communication ensues. I found it both intuitive and easy to navigate and the perfect balance of thorough without being in-your-face or over-the-top in terms of frequency.

Leading up to your kid’s or teen’s trip to the Swiss Alps in summer, emails will include links to forms that need to be completed ahead of time to provide important health information for the medical team, key dates to plan arrival and departure transportation, and even details like what size kids wear to ensure there are two LAS-branded T-shirts waiting for each of them on check-in day.

A lot of this is done online using a platform called Campminder, which is not to be confused with the Campanion app that parents can download before camp starts. I loved this app! While I was separated from my 14-year-old for three weeks, I could still “see” what she was up to thanks to photos of her sent directly to my phone. LAS hires professional photographers each summer to capture the day-to-day fun on and off campus, and a clever AI program sorts those photos and ships them off to parents automatically every few days. 

There’s a weekly parent newsletter during camp that outlines some of the things they’ve been doing and reminds you that your kid is having a way better summer than you are. And for emergencies, parents are also provided with a phone number that’s staffed 24/7.

Staff + teachers

Aside from the postcard-worthy setting, this is one of LAS’s strongest suits: its staff. With a 3:1 ratio of staff to summer students, and plenty of staff returning for years (if not decades), no one is getting lost in the shuffle here. I spent the first several days of camp onsite, quietly observing from the sidelines, and was super impressed. Oh, and did I mention they’re all adults? There isn’t an 18-year-old counsellor-in-training to be found.

Many of them are actually qualified teachers who come to Switzerland solely for this program when their school back home is closed for the summer break. Turns out the Swiss Alps in summer is a draw for the grownups, too. Some are Leysin American School graduates themselves who spent most of high school or even longer boarding and learning in Leysin; now, they’re in grad school or interning to become engineers, nurses and doctors, spending their own school breaks or taking sabbaticals to return “home” to LAS. They’re also as international as the students; I met staff from France, Australia, Romania, Poland, the United States and so many other countries, including my own — Canada.

One of the most notable things about the staff members is their expertise and how it’s applied within the summer programming. The Performing Arts program, for example, boasts a professional stage actor as its helm with an experienced choreographer alongside him. An ice climber from the U.S. national team leads the mountaineering program. There’s a woman who was published at just 16 years old and named among the “Top 100 young females to watch” in People magazine who heads up the entrepreneurship program. And the list goes on.

Dorms

Giving my daughter the opportunity to experience dorm life at 14 years old was definitely a huge highlight that anchored her “summer of a lifetime” experience.

Even during the academic year, the dorms at LAS are separated by sex and age groups, with boys sharing living spaces with other boys their age and girls doing the same in other buildings. Some of the dorms even have cafeterias in them, while the older kids walk about a hundred feet to get to meals.

Miss Q was in the Beau Site dorm, which perches over a quiet, tree-lined road and boasts windows that open up to exquisite mountain views. Like the other dorms, all of the rooms in Beau Site are shared among two or three students; and quite unlike my own university dorm room, they don’t share a bathroom between all of the floor-mates — because each room has its own private bathroom! Plus, the rooms themselves have big footprints and heaps of storage space as well as a personal safe for each kid. (I promptly explained to Miss Q that she should not expect anything like this when she eventually goes off to university in Canada.)

Even the youngest campers are expected to do their own laundry — a life skill that I’m grateful was further practised during Miss Q’s summer in Switzerland — and keep their rooms and bathrooms neat and tidy, but there is cleaning staff for things like changing linens and scrubbing toilets.

Not only do kids get to meet those in their dorms, especially the ones living on the same floor, but they’re also placed in “families” with students in their age group from other dorms — complete with a resident “mom” and “dad” who are experienced staffers that keep the group safe and tight-knit. This helps even the shyest kids meet others right out of the gate.

Nightly social activities also ensure lots of supervised mixing and mingling. There’s everything from casino and karaoke nights to Olympics-inspired events and movies. And everyone is encouraged to speak English as much as possible, so whether they’re from Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Romania, Kazakhstan or Brazil, everyone makes an effort to communicate with each other.

Phone policy

Between daily programming and evening socials, little downtime is left in the day, other than an extra hour or so during dinner service when campers are allowed to have their phones.

I. LOVE. THIS. POLICY.

Students hand their phones in (where they’re charged overnight in a locked case) when they arrive at their dorms and, except in rare circumstances, they don’t get them back until 5:45 p.m. each evening. They need to fit in dinner and device time between then and 8 p.m. when social activities begin. It’s enough time to call parents, siblings or friends back home, make a quick TikTok and keep up with Snap Streaks — but it’s not enough time to endlessly and mindlessly scroll social media or get sucked into a downloaded TV series.

They’re also allowed to take their phones on all-day Saturday excursions (stay tuned for more on this below), which means they’ll have their own photos and videos to bring home to help re-tell spectacular stories from their Swiss Alps in summer experience.

Note that younger kids who don’t have phones but bring tablets are also subject to this policy.

Food

The food is fantastic. I know because I stayed onsite and ate what the campers ate for several days, at both cafeterias. Even Miss Q’s journal entry from day two at LAS confirms it: “The tacos were SO good omg!!” It was Taco Tuesday and I have to agree — the tacos were OMG.

From the hardboiled egg station and freshly squeezed orange juice machine during breakfast service to the daily rotation of lunches and dinners that do not repeat during the three-week session — including a couple of outdoor barbecues (complete with a host of BBQ sauce options, including a delish “Sticky Korean” sauce) — along with regular staples to make salads and sandwiches, I couldn’t find a single thing to complain about. 

There’s even an excellent espresso machine with nearby syrups like hazelnut and vanilla alongside a water-refill station where you can choose cold or room-temperature H2O. Because of course you can.

Sunday brunch is a whole thing. Just wow. It’s about as ridiculous as the view at LAS, frankly — ridiculously amazing. Picture towers of crêpes and pancakes, omelettes and an egg station, scrumptious handmade doughnuts, Madeleines and other pastries like freshly made croissants, still warm from the oven, surrounded by fresh fruits. It’s a smorgasbord of foodie goodness — and it’s all part of your child’s weekly menu.

Programs, clubs + activities

Let me set the scene: myriad birds chirp in the ice skating rink near the centre of Leysin Village — not because they flew indoors and got stuck, but because the rink is actually outdoors. Sort of. There’s an enormous roof that opens to the outside world around the sides where you’d expect to find walls in any “normal” skating rink. A local hockey team takes the ice as the LAS campers put on ice skates — many for the first time.

Despite the July heatwave that hit me like a barbecued brick when I walked outside — mere feet from the edge of the arena — the rink itself remained so cool I could have put on a sweater. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I watched as the teens from South America and the Middle East giggled, clinging to each other and shuffling around unsteadily on an adjacent rink covered in synthetic ice, while some of the North American kids skated circles around them, showing off their obvious power hockey workshop skills.

Down the hall, some LAS campers played badminton. I went outside and found more campers on a football (soccer) field to my left, running up and down the pitch chasing a ball and trying to score, while to my right there were several beach volleyball courts. Miss Q was on one of them playing her favourite summer sport with a bunch of other campers her age who also selected this as their afternoon activity.

This is just one day. No, one afternoon in the life of an LAS summer student. And these are just the campers who opted for activities in this particular sports complex. There are more still off horseback riding, banana-boating in a nearby lake or back on campus painting plein air landscapes with an art teacher.

Here’s how a typical day shakes out:

• 09:00 – 12:00, morning program
• 12:00 – 13:00, lunch
• 14:00 – 15:45, afternoon club
• 16:15 – 17:45, afternoon activity
• 18:00 – 19:00, dinner
• 20:00 – 21:15, evening socials

Daily morning programming

Sports. French. Performing arts. English. Coding. Climbing. Entrepreneurship. These are the morning programs available to summer students. They fall into three distinct tracks: language, leadership and enrichment. Kids choose their track ahead of time during the registration process and tour their academic or sporting spaces on day two, where they meet those participating in and leading their programs.

Miss Q was VERY pumped for performing arts but when she learned they’d be performing in front of the entire student body, she got uncomfortable. She wouldn’t be the only one who waffled on their pre-chosen program that day, but the students are all heavily encouraged to try one more day before making a switch, so she went back the next day even though the first one did not elicit any jazz hands.

Actually, that’s not quite true — she really enjoyed the vocal warm-ups and improv sessions, and there was even another teen in the group who is a well-known child star in Saudi Arabia, but the prospect of being on stage in front of the older teens in just three short weeks made her crumble inside. She knows she missed out on a lot of fun exercises, dance classes and Broadway singalongs, but she quickly discovered that she’s a more introverted performer at heart.

So, she requested a switch to the French program — and loved it! Three hours a day, she engaged with French instruction in fun and practical ways, unlike anything in our French curriculum in Canada. They made crêpes and went to the grocery store, learning how to communicate with each other and with locals in town. This is the French-speaking part of Switzerland, after all.

Daily afternoon clubs

Afternoon clubs are also chosen in advance and have a two-day switcharoo option if kids aren’t quite feeling it once they get there. Miss Q chose and stuck with the Cooking & Baking Club and enjoyed every single day. There was a real focus on healthy meal and snack prep, and she was so excited about one particular snack that we just had to get the ingredients (pitted dates, shredded coconut, crunchy peanut butter and dark chocolate) as soon as we got home. She now makes these “candy-dates” at home a lot — and they’re delicious, so we’re all benefitting from her cooking class. 

Other clubs include team sports, performing or visual arts, tennis, hiking and climbing, and even music and video production. I was a fly on the wall for the first day of the Hiking & Climbing Club, which looked like a blast. The students start indoors at the school’s onsite climbing wall, learning how to harness themselves and belay, before heading outdoors to climb at a nearby quarry as they build more skills. By the end of the camp session, they were hiking to offsite, overnight campsites.

Daily afternoon activities

There are so many afternoon activities in the LAS Summer in Switzerland program that campers could do a different activity every single day and not repeat one. However, these aren’t pre-selected like the morning program and club so if your kids decide they want to play table tennis every afternoon, they can.

Activities take place both on and off campus and can include options like horseback riding, beach volleyball, swimming, ice skating, hiking, indoor and outdoor climbing, stand-up paddleboarding, floor hockey, ukulele lessons, drawing, yoga, dance and more.

Fantastic Fridays

Just when you thought, “must my child really endure one more day of paradise?,” it’s Friday. The routine gets a little change-up, and campers are invited to choose from an ultra-fun list of special activities. Possibilities include things like surfing on a surf simulator, canyoning, going to an escape room, completing a high-ropes course, white-water rafting, VR gaming and other jealousy-inducing activities (it’s me; I’m the jealous one).

Weekend excursions

Scrap the Monday-to-Friday schedule — weekends at LAS are even more amazing! Because it’s time to get off-campus and explore. Students spend two complete weekends at LAS summer camp and there are full-day excursions on each Saturday and half-day activities on Sunday afternoons (after they have an opportunity to sleep in and enjoy Sunday brunch).

The excursions change every year; this past summer, students in Miss Q’s session could choose from three different Saturday excursions:

• Zermatt — this was Miss Q’s first excursion and they scored because it was a clear day in Zermatt and she got to see the top of the mighty Matterhorn! There were also goats in the middle of town, which featured prominently in her travel journal
• Annecy (France) — yes, yes, YES, my kid got to go to France thanks to summer camp. How cool is that? She said it was the prettiest little town and loved how it felt immediately so different than Switzerland. In her journal, she wrote, “Day 5 of camp, going to France tmrw!”
• Glacier 3000 — which I featured in my Swiss Riviera post — so named for its 3,000-metre peak experience, this was the third excursion option, but Miss Q and I had already visited when we first arrived in Switzerland before camp started (thanks to the great value we got with the Swiss Travel Pass price)

The second session featured trips to Lucerne, Bern and Aosta (Italy).

On Sundays, there were five or six rotating choices available and one that Miss Q chose was a visit to some thermal baths. Her journal entry reads: “The baths were insane — best pools I’ve ever been to ever!”

And don’t forget, on top of all of this, there are also all of the social activities that happen after dinner and on weekends, including a big end-of-program dinner and dance. There was even a beautiful parent soirée on the second-last night that I was able to attend after I returned from my own solo Swiss Alps summer. (That’s right — you, too, could dovetail your summer vacation with the LAS summer camp dates and have a three-week kid-free adventure of your own, including the Swiss Riviera and Saas-Fee, Switzerland.)

Check out The Capra — a fabulous, five-star hotel in Saas-Fee; the perfect spot to start your own Swiss Alps in summer fun.

Health Centre

There are two health centres — one in the lower campus and one in the upper campus — with wings in each to give boys and girls privacy and areas to fully quarantine. With four nurses on staff, a mental health counsellor, exam rooms and both over-the-counter and prescription medications available, as needed, most of the usual camp ailments (coughs and colds, headaches, period cramps) can be handled easily onsite.

Students aren’t allowed to keep medication of any kind in their rooms, but pretty much anything they could possibly need can be found at the health centres, doled out by full-time medical professionals.

Every camper is also fully covered for medical insurance while enrolled at LAS in the summer program, so for anything that’s too much for the health centre staff, there are nearby doctors, clinics and hospitals, too — all part of your child’s program fees.

Adjustment period 

While some of the kids and teens who attend the Leysin American School summer program are enthusiastic extroverts and ardent travellers who’ve already been away from their parents many times, or who have been away at boarding school for years, there are many more who have left the nest for the first time. Or gotten on a plane alone for the first time. Or are shy. Or have anxiety.

The first few days are easy for some — and pretty rough for others. There might even be a few tears. But typically, by the end of the first week, those nerves have settled, kids have found their people and the adjustment period is over. Staff see the same cycle every session and there’s even a counsellor onsite to help work through the more serious cases. By the third week, most of the kids who started out scared don’t want to leave.

Before their phones were taken the first day, I had several “I miss you” texts. It didn’t mean Miss Q wasn’t still incredibly excited to be there; this was a huge change in structure and environment and she didn’t know a soul. She just needed time and space to fly.

Reading her journal once we got home (with her permission, of course), I can tell it wasn’t long before she found her groove. Her core group of girlfriends were from the States, Brazil and Russia and she notes quickly that “everyone at Beau Site is really connected.” Other entries mention how fun the activities are and how excited she is for different outings and, ultimately, how fast three weeks flew by.

Registration, cost + scholarships

Registration for the summer ahead at LAS begins in late-September each year. It costs 9,300 CHF (Swiss Francs) per three-week session*, and there are discounts for siblings and for campers who stay for both summer sessions; there are also a few scholarships available, though you need to reach out directly to inquire.

Summer tuition includes:

• Pick-up and drop-off at the Geneva airport, if needed
• Full room and board
• All programs, clubs, activities and socials
• All excursions, including roundtrip transportation and boxed lunches
• Two T-shirts, which must be worn when students are off-campus for safety purposes
• Laundry detergent and facilities on every dorm floor
• All linens, washed and refreshed regularly
• Housekeeping support
• All OTC medicines
• Medical insurance

There are no hidden fees, but there are optional add-ons like paraponting (paragliding), which is a very popular activity in Switzerland. LAS also recommends each camper bring around 100 CHF per week for spending money — and although Switzerland is the most expensive country in Europe, with a boba drink costing upwards of 8-10 CHF (that’s CAD$14-20!!!), for example, Miss Q didn’t even come close to spending that much.

Of course, this price point won’t work for every family. Nothing works for every family. But before you completely count yourself out, think about how much you spend on competitive sports or dance; between registration fees, equipment or costumes, private coaching, tournaments and recitals and the cost of getting to and from different cities, staying in hotels and eating out every weekend when you’re not at your home rink or studio…it may add up to more than the equivalent of 9,300 CHF. And, sure, you can argue that those seasons last longer than summer camp — but you can also argue that they’re both investments that pay off in unique ways.

And, make no mistake, the LAS summer program is an investment. At around 440 CHF per day, this is definitely a top-tier summer experience — one filled with chef-prepared meals, luxury day trips and activities that are beyond the norm for most camps. But you get what you pay for and it’ll pay dividends in so many ways: new connections around the globe, better social skills, deeper cultural appreciation and unparalleled learning opportunities.

Some final thoughts…

Miss Q walked away from her three-week summer program with new friends, including a chat group with more than 50 other kids she met that — three months later — is still active. She learned that some cultures greet each other by shaking hands, kissing cheeks or bowing. She also learned a lot of new swear words in other languages (Russian is her favourite). But, most of all, she left LAS transformed: more independent, more confident, more worldly.

I knew that leaving her at LAS was going to be hard (on me!); after all, she’s my baby and this was her first time abroad. But I didn’t anticipate being so emotional coming back to collect her. I cried, of course, and not just because I missed her — but because it just felt so…big. A discernible moment between childhood and what’s waiting on the other side — all in the span of just three weeks in a tiny Swiss village.

Visit LAS.ch to learn more about its unforgettable Summer in Switzerland program, register for next year or contact summer@las.ch to ask about scholarship opportunities for your child or teen to experience the Swiss Alps in summer.

 

DISCLAIMER: Miss Q was invited to experience the Swiss Alps in summer at LAS on scholarship, though we still had to get her to and from Switzerland on our own dime as does any student. We were not prescribed any content directives nor was LAS given an opportunity to approve this post.

*Annual fees subject to change.