Summertime is when school ends, so kids can play, explore, grow, and have some fun. Children need free, unstructured time to roam around and figure things out independently. They also need a healthy balance of the opposite: a structured, guided environment to support their learning.
While the approaches may differ in form, both are essential to help them grow. These seemingly opposite learning methods complement each other. More importantly, both can be incredibly fun!
RP4K strives to give kids a stimulating, challenging environment to grow their knowledge, experience and skills. We do this throughout the year, but for the past two decades, our concentrated, immersive, three-hour-long summer sessions allow children to dive in deeper and learn more in less time.
Let’s check out RP4K’s summer coding camp so parents know what to expect, which course to enroll their children in, and why it’s such an effective program.
It doesn’t matter whether your seven-year-old kid is brand new to coding or your teenager has already built apps, video games, or websites. Our coding classes for kids target children of all experience and skill levels, so they’re always progressing and having fun learning new things.
We offer students multiple courses at every level. There are two courses for beginners, two for developing students, three intermediate level courses, and another two for the most advanced students. RP4K has evolved our curriculum over the years to find new ways to keep challenging students, expanding their skills and understanding of concepts they learned in prior courses.
If there’s any doubt about which course is most suitable for your child, don’t hesitate to contact us! We can discuss it and help you pick. You can also opt for a free trial session to sample a lesson and see if it’s right for you.
Summer is busy for families. The RP4K summer camp can accommodate your schedule with three-hour sessions offered every day for either one or two weeks. You can choose the morning or afternoon session, which runs between 9 am-12:00 pm or 1:00 pm-4:00 pm, respectively.
Older students looking to take the deepest plunge of all have the option of signing up for a more intense all-day course.
A lot has changed at RP4K over the two decades we’ve run our summer coding camp sessions. More recently, at the beginning of the pandemic, we invested in a brand-new learning management system and screen-sharing technology.
Such vital, foundational tech elevates online sessions, so students sitting at home get the same high-quality experience they expect in the classroom. Our interactive sessions require students to have a microphone, and a camera is recommended. These are two things you likely have and are probably deeply familiar with after using them a lot over the last two years.
Our new learning management system lets students and parents see overall course progress at a glance, access external resources comprehensively, and enhances our ordinary sessions with supplementary material.
Learning STEM skills is an excellent way that young people can keep computer skills sharp over the summer, but RP4K also gives students directly transferrable, practical knowledge they can use. Whether they’re building the digital platforms of the future or using these soft and hard computer skills to get a job one day, we proudly teach the coding languages industry expects coders to know.
Here’s a list of the coding languages we teach:
Students gradually learn more the deeper they get into computer programming languages for kids before advancing to the next language. Right from lesson number one, the sessions emphasize fun above all while teaching fundamental mathematical concepts like integers, vectors, and even trigonometry.
When kids are experienced and comfortable in the coding languages used to program majorly popular platforms like Netflix, or video games like Minecraft, one day, employers will fight among themselves to hire them.
Some former RP4k students have gone on to program video games for companies like Blizzard or Microsoft. Others have become RP4K teachers themselves! The RP4K toolkit prepares someone for entry into a wider range of jobs than you may think, and it all comes from learning industry-standard coding languages.
It doesn’t matter how much knowledge a summer session imparts if children don’t enjoy the class. RP4K prioritizes pleasure, and we don’t view coding and fun as being contradictory — coding is useful and fun!
Our lessons revolve around programming and designing a custom video game, one that children can play with friends and family. Such a tangible achievement gives kids a rewarding sense of accomplishment.
We embed gamification concepts into our lessons, so the pedagogy harnesses what makes video games so addictive and engaging, but for educational purposes. Creating a game becomes its own type of game. Kids chase a tantalizing carrot, so they’re motivated and genuinely hungry to finish the course and their project.
RP4K caps class sizes at four, so every student gets their teacher’s attention effortlessly. Sessions are orderly and undisturbed by classroom management issues that can be a setback in larger classroom environments.
We make it a point to hire teachers young enough to have also grown-up playing video games themselves. The combination of expert knowledge and similar first-hand experience in a shared passion makes learning fun.
Enough adults today look back on their time spent playing video games as the halcyon days of youth when life was mostly a game. RP4K sessions are a type of passing of the torch, where undergrad students in computer science or computer engineering relay give their guidance, expertise, and mentorship to the next generation of gamers.
Students also have excellent practical resources if they want to discuss where coding can take them later in school or the workforce. Whether it’s to spark joy, transfer knowledge, or field career advice, students are always better off with personalized attention from their teacher.
The summertime is understandably associated with children frolicking outdoors. Kids need to run around in nature to probe and explore freely. However, the opposite can be great, too, as there’s a difference between lazy, passive “screen time” and learning vital skills in a fun and structured environment.
If you want your child to have fun this summer while absorbing foundational skills to help them understand and contribute to the technological world, sign them up for online coding courses this summer at RP4K.
