Rediscover What it Means to Play, Online – What to Expect this Summer at Saturday Kids
May 22, 2021
So, it’s been a crazy week, and we’d like to take a breather to update you about what to expect as we bring the play-based learning online this Summer, and how this might affect your existing or upcoming camp booking this June holiday.
At Saturday Kids, our priority is ensuring kids have an awesome experience learning to code and reach the same meaningful learning outcomes they would’ve offline. And we won’t settle for anything less.
With kids at the center, and shaped by our insights from last year’s run of online camps (deja vu, anyone? ? ) we’ve redesigned the Saturday Kids online experience, and we’re psyched to roll it out.
Read on to learn about the major changes, and how they might affect your plans:
Same amount of fun, shorter class times.
Our holiday camps are typically designed as 16 hour camps, with 3.25 hours of class time a day. While it’s possible to keep kids engaged like this in person, we know from our experience working with little kids and as big kids ourselves that this just isn’t likely to fly.
We’ve redesigned our camps for different age groups to account for the added constraint of remote delivery and its impact on kids’ attention spans, and a necessary part of that was the difficult decision to reduce the number of hours of class time without compromising learning outcomes. For kids ages 7-14, camps will be shortened from 16 to 12 hours, and for preschoolers ages 5-6, camps will be reduced from 16 to 6 hours.
With reduced class times, we’re also taking the opportunity to introduce kids to a friend of Saturday Kids, and a platform to further encourage their development as self-directed learners…
Introducing Galileo – an online self-directed global school – for kids ages 7-14!
Kids are natural learners and independent thinkers – us educators are really just here to provide rockets and point to the stars.
This Summer, we’re excited for your kids to try out something new from home. Partnering Galileo – an online, self-directed global school that helps kids become independent, self-directed, self-organised learners – kids ages 7-14 who are signed up for our holiday camps get an exclusive 1 month passport with unlimited access to Galileo Online Afterschool Clubs for the month of June (i.e. throughout the MOE school holidays).
That means up to 20 hours of fun-packed live learnin’ experiences in topics like film-making, foreign languages, leadership and problem-solving, and more – in the month of June. (You can read more about Saturday Kids’ founder John’s experience with Galileo here.)
The future (heck, the present) is uncertain and unpredictable – but one thing we’ll stake our bets on is that kids who are curious, self-directed, and globally aware learners are going to be the ones shaping the future. And we can’t wait for your curious kids to take the next step towards that.
Saturday Kids Virtual Playroom: Coming Soon.
It’s been a while in the making, but we’re psyched to be launching the beta version of Saturday Kids Virtual Playroom this Summer.
Designed as an online community for the kids who come through our doors, expect showcases of students’ creative coding projects, opportunities to apply their coding superpowers, and a directory of curated learning resources to keep ’em curious. Launching this Summer.
Our team will be reaching out to parents whose plans might be affected this Summer via phone and email, as well as to run through the nitty gritty of the changes we’ve implemented for this season of camps. As a small, independent business, we can’t overstate how much we appreciate the support and patience of our community; it’s folks like you who enable us to dream big, so we can inspire your kids to dream bigger.
Our online coding camps are open for new registrations from the public, with awesome virtual options available for kids ages 5-14. We’re keeping classes small and capping ’em at 4-5 kids each, so don’t wait too long book your spot.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but thank you for trusting us with your kids. It’s our privilege to keep ’em curious and inspire them to create a better world for themselves and others, and we hope to be able to keep doing this as long as we can.