Life at Coding Camp - London Summer Coding Camps For Kids
by Erin Laverton, School Partnership Manager and Customer Success
With the summer holidays among us, our On Location Coding Camps in London are a great way to kick start or continue your child’s coding journey. Using our creative themes and real-life examples, we at Cypher teach coding classes for kids in order to get them future ready. This summer our coding camps will be held in some of the leading independent schools across London in Notting Hill, Ealing, Acton, St. John’s Wood, Hampstead, Fulham and Dulwich. Our coding camps offer creativity and coding combined with enriched childcare, outstanding teaching and great fun for children aged 5 -12+ years old.
Why book an On Location camp?
Learn to code through creative themes - we inspire children to code by creating exciting content inspired by real world themes such as Nature, Sport, Entrepreneurship, Architecture and more! This Summer our creative themes are:
Awesome Animal Adventures - Nature + code camp: where children can find out how technology, conservation and a love of nature can be entwined to create some amazing projects with coding!
Tokyo Olympics - Sport + Culture + code camp: where children can learn how to design games and use coding to measure and track sporting achievements. In addition to this, they will be able to learn Japanese culture looking at everything from traditional tea ceremonies to beautiful kimonos to inspire them on their coding projects.
Kids have great fun whilst learning to code! Cypher coding camps are a place for children to be curious, use their imagination and experiment with technology through fun projects.
Students build teamwork and collaboration skills - Our coding classes encourage students to work in teams to program robots, win games, and complete coding challenges. Students love to attend camp with their friends as well as make new ones! Collaboration is one of the most important skills for the future of work.
Take home a Cypher-tastic gift each day - For every day your child attends, they will have a gift to take home linking to the theme of the week. Children can enjoy exciting presents ranging from Cypher water bottles, beautiful chopsticks, fidget poppers or their very own tote bag and T-shirt!
What a typical day looks like
10:00 am | Check In
This is where the fun starts! Children will arrive super excited at the door. They will say goodbye before heading to their class, ready to have an awesome day. While we wait for everyone to arrive, students enjoy mindfulness colouring or building paper robots!
10:15 am | Warm up
We start with TouchTyping to warm up children’s fingers and familiarise them with their computer. Each student has their own personal laptop or desktop computer for the whole week. This also allows the children time to get settled, make friends and chat. Our teachers are great at helping calm any first day jitters and making sure new students have a buddy for their first time at camp.
10:45 am | Off-screen Project Work
Our camps have a great balance of offscreen and onscreen projects to encourage diverse types of learning and ensure we promote how much screen time is healthy throughout the day. Our offscreen project planning exercises encourage students to think creatively, develop their team building skills, and communicate their ideas clearly. For example, students will work in groups to design a robot, brainstorm how to code its functions and then prepare the tools they will need to construct it later in the day.
11:15 am | Healthy Snacks and Mindfulness
Children will have some time to relax and recharge their batteries with a healthy snack and water.
11:30 am | Coding Time
We have our Coding lessons (which they can continue at home using their own logins) following the theme of the week, where children may create their own baseball game in CoSpaces or code their own animal themed adventure in Scratch. Our teachers will be there each step of the way to explain each coding concept, discuss how to troubleshoot their errors in the code and provide extra words of encouragement.
12:45 pm | Lunch Time
Students bring their own nut-free packed lunch and a refillable water bottle. After eating they get a chance to have their own time to play with campmates outdoors if the weather is nice. Alternatively, we have some great indoor activities should we have those inevitable August showers!
1:15 pm | Sports Time
We know how important it is for children to get their recommended daily exercise and work on their motor skills, so for at least 45 minutes a day, on top of their playtimes, they will have outdoor/indoor games in-line with what they have been learning. For example, if they have been learning about animals they may play an animal themed game such as Snakes in the Gutter or Busy Bees.
2:00 pm | Project Creation
Our lesson plans include exciting take home projects as well as computing foundation exercises. This is where the children’s learning throughout the day is brought to life as they work hard either with friends or solo to create their project for the day. For example, a programmable curiosity box, digital artwork, an architectural postcard, or a fun costume-swap app, to name just a few of our recent popular camp activities.
4:00 pm | Home Time
Camp wraps up at 4pm where teachers hand out awesome take home gifts which correlate with the themed project of the week. Students can get a little teary when camp ends but don’t worry, you can come back again Monday to Friday for more Cypher fun!
We hope to welcome your child to a Cypher coding camp at one of our London venues this summer! Sign up to a location near you:
> Notting Hill
> Fulham
> Ealing
> Hampstead
> Dulwich
Places are limited sign up now.
