Apple has announced that it will once again be running programs for kids in its retail stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico this summer, giving younger users the opportunity to explore and learn creative and coding techniques, using Apple’s products and services, of course.
The “camps” are free 90-minute sessions held at numerous Apple Stores in each country that provide kids between the ages of 8 and 12 hands-on exploration of music, coding, moviemaking, and art and design. While Apple has not yet announced the topics for this year’s North American camps, the program has already launched in Singapore, where the Apple Summer Camp in Singapore page (via MacRumors) shows four programmes that will most likely serve as the basis for all of Apple’s kids camps this summer.
- Creating Your Own Song with GarageBand will teach kids how to build their own songs using GarageBand for iPad, including the basics of rhythm and making beats as well as experimenting with Smart Instruments.
- Designing Your Dream Park with iPad is intended to teach design skills and will actually take kids through a more interactive experience where they will take a short walk to gather inspiration and photos and then use Procreate and an Apple Pencil to design their own park.
- Coding Fundamental sand Programming Robots is for kids who lean more toward the nuts and bolts of coding, using Sphero robots to create a program that will tell a story using lights, sounds, and animations.
- Directing Your Own Movie with Clips and iMovie will encourage budding cinematographers by showing them how the iPad can be used to create their own movies, including experimenting with camera shots and storyboarding ideas in Keynote.
Each of the programs is spread out over three 90-minute sessions that take place on separate days over the course of a week. In the past, some sessions have been on contiguous days, while others are more spread out (for example, Monday-Wednesday-Friday sessions). Kids are also required to be accompanied by a parent or guardian for the duration of their session.
In past summers, the sessions were organized along similar themes, involving storytelling, music, cinematography, design, and coding. Previous sessions included topics like Creating Characters and Composing Music, Stories in Motion with iMovie, Coding Games and Programming Robots, Beat Making and Songwriting with GarageBand, and Telling Stories with Clips. Sessions are led by local Apple Store staff, and all of the necessary hardware is supplied by Apple for the kids to work with. During the last session of each camp, kids are given the opportunity to present their final project — a song, a design, a robot story, or a movie trailer — to the rest of the group. In previous years, kids attending Apple’s Camps have also received a free t-shirt.
For the North American camps, registration is expected to open on June 17th, and many of the sessions usually fill up pretty quickly. Those interested can keep an eye on the company’s Apple Camp page for more details, or sign up to receive a notification by email when registration opens. The Apple Camp is also expected to be available in Europe, with registrations opening later this month.