Neuron Garage
Welcome to the Growth Mindset Camp
At Neuron Garage, campers get hands-on, repurposing their recycling to solve fun, weekly engineering challenges. Through the process, they will make new friends, experience the joy of exploring what they can do with their own hands, and develop a growth mindset.
You can join us for one week, multiple weeks – or the whole summer. Each week presents a new challenge to keep the engagement and effort high, and another opportunity for your children to practice the tools that will help them build a growth mindset.
A growth mindset is the most powerful tool a child can have for tackling the challenges and opportunities they’ll encounter in life. This belief leads to a resilient attitude that sees struggle and mistakes as opportunities for growth, and a life-long love of learning.
Our program is designed to teach children that their talents and abilities can be developed through good strategies, hard work, and feedback so that they take on bigger challenges in life and stick with those challenges longer, unlocking their full potential.
Days at Neuron Garage are a careful balance between individual and group activity, along with time for relaxation, reflection, and play.
We take time each day, and extra time on Monday mornings, to establish a sense of community and make sure that each camper feels connected.
Open-ended challenges and repurposing recycling lead children through a process of struggle, failure, and success.
Simple frameworks and strategies help children get back to building after they get stuck or overwhelmed — and teach them to push themselves to keep improving past initial success.
With enough practice, this new approach to both struggle and success becomes habit. This habit over time fortifies a Growth Mindset, and unlocking a child’s full potential.
At Neuron Garage, children learn and have opportunities to practice our growth mindset framework: Think – Build – Learn.
Guided games, group discussions, and individual coaching throughout the week reinforce this process, helping children understand where they are in it — along with their emotional state — and how to move forward.
The weekly challenges have clear objectives, but no instructions or set solutions, so the possibilities are limitless – as are the opportunities for struggle, failure and the need to seek out inspiration and feedback from peers. Building with simple tools and recycled materials requires creativity and perseverance. By using their hands, instead of manipulating within a digital world, campers engage more of their brains, resulting in greater growth.
At Neuron Garage, we stay focused on one main building challenge for an entire week, requiring campers to iterate on their ideas as they face setbacks and successes. Children are so often moved quickly from one activity to another and they miss out on the opportunity to persevere and develop resilience. However, when they have an entire week for one challenge, campers can really engage in the Think > Build > Learn process that they will be able to apply in almost any situation.
Campers engage in discussions and activities throughout the week designed to shift their perspective on mistakes and struggle, coming to see these as opportunities for growth. They develop grit and resilience as they experience the results of hard work and iteration. Through thoughtful questions, campers explore their attitudes on success and failure, and shift their mindset to embrace both failure and success as information and not endpoints.
We want your child to believe that their talents and abilities can be developed through good strategies, hard work, and feedback. A growth mindset leads to a life-long love of learning and a resilient attitude that sees struggle and mistakes as opportunities for growth. People with a growth mindset take on bigger challenges in life and stick with those challenges longer, which unlocks their full potential.
Join us for one week, multiple weeks, or the whole summer!
Each week presents a new challenge to keep the engagement and effort high, and another opportunity for your children to practice the tools that will help them build a Growth Mindset.
What can you create out of cardboard? With piles of boxes, workshops with special cardboard tools and techniques, and plenty of creativity and grit, the possibilities are endless – and so are the opportunities to apply our THINK>BUILD>LEARN framework as they tinker, test and iterate on their designs.
If you crash-landed on an unknown planet, what would you do? Would you stay and build shelter? Would you fix your engine or design a new spaceship to go home? This week, campers will race against the clock to create spaceships, shelters, and other necessities for outer space survival.
What kind of adventure park can you create with toilet paper tubes and tape – and loads of other recycled goods? This week, campers will design, build, and refine miniature rides and rollercoasters.
What structures and other spaces does a city have? This week, campers will discuss what defines a city and then build the parts most compelling to them – a skyscraper, a post office, a school building, a bridge, a public park – or all of the above!
During this week, campers will have the freedom to build whatever they want. While they will be limited by the materials and time available, their creativity will be limitless!
Can you build a castle with a working drawbridge? Can you design a catapult that fires accurately enough to defend against intruders? This week, campers will use two simple machines — pulleys and levers — along with lots of imagination to build castles, complete with offense and defense systems.
This week, campers will work creatively within the confines of various sets of limitations to turn recycled materials into a functioning arcade. We will celebrate their accomplishments by playing each other’s games.
If you could wake up tomorrow in any home, what would it look like? This week, campers will be designers and builders as they construct and furnish the homes of their dreams.
Can you build a car out of recycled materials? What about a train and a track? Or would you prefer to take to the air with a plane or a hot air balloon? Or see if you can float a boat? This week will be full of motion as campers design forms of transportation.
Can you create something that solves a problem? Or something that would bring you joy? This week, campers come up with an idea and a plan, and then get busy building, testing, and redesigning as they learn from their successes and setbacks.
Campers are divided into groups based on enrollment, staffing, and space. While there are some opportunities for interaction, the majority of the week is spent with with these groups of similar-aged peers.
(K-2nd)
The early years at Neuron Garage are focused on nurturing campers’ innate curiosity and creativity, while introducing them to the Think > Build > Learn framework. Campers tinker and build with recycled materials as they engage in daily guided projects related to a weekly theme.
(3rd-6th)
At Neuron Garage, our Makers engage deeply in a highly intentional process each week that cultivates a growth mindset. The focus is on learning and applying good strategies as they build each week towards solutions to an open-ended challenge.
Enroll today to secure a spot. Cancel anytime before May 1st for a full refund and anytime after to receive credit good for the current summer or following summer!
$375
/week
$400
/week
$425
/week
$100
/week
If you are not satisfied with the program for ANY reason by the end of the day Tuesday, you can request a full refund.
Some children come for just a week, though many stay for several weeks, and some for the whole summer. We have found that while we can see growth in a child from just one week of Neuron Garage, we have seen much larger gains from children who come for multiple weeks. We surveyed our staff and 95% of them “Agreed” or “Strongly Agreed” that campers who attend two or more weeks of Neuron Garage leave the experience better creative thinkers, collaborators and with more resilience.
Campers should bring a lunch and a water bottle with them each day. We provide simple, packaged snacks during the day, though you are welcome to send additional snacks. Campers are free to help themselves to a snack in the morning and one in the afternoon and are encouraged to hydrate throughout the day.
Campers should come in comfortable clothes that can get messy. They will be moving around and working with a variety of materials, some of which may end up on their clothing.
Campers will have time outside each day, so if you would like them to wear sunscreen, please apply it in the morning before they come. You are welcome to send them with additional sunscreen to reapply in the afternoon. We will remind campers of this option and do our best to facilitate.
Capacity varies by campus, as does the capacity for individual classrooms at each campus. Please reach out to the Director at the campus you are considering for more details.
There will be 1 adult counselor for every 10-15 campers.
If you are not satisfied with the program for ANY reason by the end of the day Tuesday, you can request a full refund. Each week at Neuron Garage is another opportunity to practice and apply the tools and strategies that build a Growth Mindset. One week is great, but practice is essential, so multiple weeks are better. We want to make sure that our Campers come back summer after summer and work hard to create a positive experience. The Garage Guarantee is our way of making sure we are delivering on that promise.
Each of our locations is open for campers from 8:30am-5:30pm.
The core camp hours are 9:30am-3:30pm, with Extended Hours until 5:30pm. We have a flexible drop off from 8:30-9:30 each morning because we know mornings with children don’t always go according to plan, and it can be difficult to get everyone up, fed, dressed and out of the house at a precise time. And it’s summer, so sometimes a slow morning is just what you need. However, this time at camp is put to great use. If you are able to get here before 9:30, children have the opportunity to connect with each other and the staff on a personal level and enjoy time together. This seemingly casual part of the day is actually a very purposeful way to create community and forge relationships that become important during the challenging, and sometimes frustrating, building times when campers often need to collaborate in order to succeed.
The regular camp day ends at 3pm. Between 1/2 to 3/4 of campers are picked up from 3-3:30pm, while the rest stay for Extended Hours. Our goal for this time is that when parents arrive, campers beg for just five more minutes. We believe that campers need some down time in the later afternoon, so this time is a bit different from the rest of the day. During Extended Hours, we take a break from the weekly Building Challenges and offer crafts and other fun activities that reinforce creativity and fine motor skills, which leads to more successful building. There is also plenty of time for campers to play games inside and run around outside (weather permitting).
Do you want to leverage your strengths, talents, and energy to make the future brighter?
Bring the transformational Neuron Garage experience to your community!