Summer is an excellent opportunity for kids to code — more hours are available to discover new interests or dive into passions. Kids coding summer camps are extremely popular, however you don’t want a one-size-fits-all camp. It should be personalized to ensure they learn and have fun.
Our year-round mentoring pairs each kid with an impressive college instructor for weekly 90 minute sessions. Our curriculum, constantly improved since 2011, is the perfect blend of structure and open-ended projects for independence and grit.
During the summer we offer a personalized camp option to accelerate the learning. These are 3 hours per day with a private instructor, whether one-on-one or with a couple friends.
Hear From a Student
Scratch For Kids Learning to Code
Many of our 11 year-old students begin with Scratch drag-and-drop coding to learn the fundamentals. Breakout Mentors currently is working with 24 kids in Scratch! Even though it is beginner friendly, it includes important concepts like loops, conditionals, and variables. Kids love to make their own versions of games, for example the classic game Space Invaders. Mentors encourage the students to add their own creative features, like speeding up the enemies after reaching 10 points.
As students progress, mentors are able to introduce more advanced concepts and encourage increasingly complex projects. 11 Year-Olds who work with Breakout Mentors over months and years will eventually move from Scratch to a language they type like Python or Java.
What parents say…
Breakout Mentors was exactly what we were looking for when our 11 year old son asked to learn programming. He connected quickly with his mentor, who has taught him things beyond our knowledge. After his last session, he tried to explain to me some aspect of the programming he just learned and then said ‘I feel so proud of myself.’ We are proud of him too and thankful for Breakout Mentors.
Father of 6th grade boy in Palo Alto
Breakout Mentors did a wonderful job matching my daughter with a mentor – she is perfect! My daughter told me that she learned more from one session than her last 3 summer camps combined. She was so excited! Thank you – this is exactly what we were looking for!
We just passed our second anniversary with Breakout Mentors. Our 12-year-old son has had two mentors and they’ve both been terrific: enthusiastic, knowledgeable, professional, and patient. They’ve been great about building a curriculum on the fly around his interests and keeping him engaged and learning. Highly recommended.
What students say…
