LEGOs are one of STEM’s greatest assets. LEGO and Robotics summer camps in the SF Bay Area help our kids engineer a well-rounded approach to life and a deep presence of imagination. In LEGO Builders and LEGO Robotics programs, the activities are fueled by collaboration, kids’ ideas and initiation, and real problems that they can see and touch.

Moving up to middle school can be the first major life transition that children experience. This major threshold can be challenging, and parents eagerly seek to help. Summer camp helps tweens to build independence and tackle the environmental, mental, and emotional challenges of middle school. There’s no better place to prepare for this transition.

In one of our leadership discussions at the start of a camp session, a camper named Ben expressed that he’d never held any real leadership roles in his life. But, as we kept talking and learning more about each other in the group, I offered that his organizing a soccer game across grades after every lunch period, volunteering to read first when the teacher asks and no one else volunteers, and showing his younger sister how to draw cartoon animals the way he loves to all represent significant leadership initiative. Leadership training programs and summer camps for teens shine because they give kids a chance to step out of their everyday routines and roles for experiential learning, by living the things they learn—but also because they help kids to recognize how their own strengths are already leading and inspiring others around them.