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
Python For Kids Learning to Code
Many of our 17 year-old students use Python to learn programming fundamentals. Breakout Mentors is currently working with 58 kids in Python! It is an excellent language for learning to problem-solve like a computer scientist and to become comfortable with concepts like loops, conditionals, and functions. Kids love to make their own versions of games, including the classic Atari game Breakout. Mentors encourage the students to add their own creative features, like after hitting the ball five times the paddle shrinks.
As students progress, mentors are able to introduce more advanced concepts and encourage increasingly complex projects. 17 Year-Olds who work with Breakout Mentors over months and years will eventually move to Java, advanced apps and projects, USACO Competition Programming Academy, or Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Academy.
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 was exactly what I was looking for. We started 2 years ago when my daughter was 11 and now she is an expert Scratch coder which translated easily into learning Python! Her mentors don’t tell her what to do, they help her figure it out. They push her to make her projects better and more complex. They treat her like a peer and do things like white boarding sessions and have passionate discussions about programming logic during her sessions. Both of her mentors have been women, which has been amazing. And an added benefit is she loves going to the CAL engineering library every week, wants to be an engineer and attend MIT! It’s ignited her passion about STEM subjects and she is so driven now. This program is truly amazing. I can’t say enough good things about it.
My son just received notification that he has been placed in AP Computer Science – Data Structures, the top class at his school. We are thrilled. Thanks to Breakout Mentors for all of their expert mentoring and prep work. It all paid off!
What students say…
