case study

Camp Coderpillar

A kids’ coding camp I founded, and the website I designed and hand-coded to run it.

  • UX design
  • Front-end
  • Founder
Visit the live site ↗ Read the story
Camp Coderpillar home page mockup: a light blue header, the headline “from curious caterpillars to confident coders,” camp details, and a caterpillar illustration coding on a laptop
My role
Founder, instructor, UX designer, and front-end developer
Timeline
Jun 2025 – Present
Collaborator
Anna Schroder, illustrator
Built with
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Mailchimp
the idea

A camp built from three things I love

I came home for the summer wanting to combine my programming experience, my enthusiasm for teaching curious young minds, and my love for all things STEM. Camp Coderpillar is what hatched.

It’s a weekly summer camp where beginners ages 7–12 learn to code alongside hands-on science and other creative activities, in small groups and a supportive, beginner-friendly environment.

The website has two audiences: kids, who should find it fun, and parents, who need to understand the camp and sign up.

the website

Designed, then coded by hand

Five pages: Home, Camps, About me, FAQ, and Sign up. I designed the experience and built every page, plus the registration form, in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The FAQ answers the questions parents ask most, from age range and laptop requirements to the sibling discount and absence policy.

Home page mockup: headline and camp details with a leaf-and-caterpillar illustration, an About section with the instructor character, and an Upcoming camps list with a caterpillar and laptop illustration
Home page mockup.Open full size ↗
About me page mockup titled “so, who am i?” with a short introduction and a portrait photo
About me page mockup.Open full size ↗
The look

A friendly, bright palette

A caterpillar mascot, a hand-lettered logo, a light-blue header, and cream pages with lime highlights carry through every page. Colors below are taken from the mockups.

Sky#CDE4F1
Header

Cream#FFFFF4
Page

Lime#F7FDBB
Highlight bands

Peach#FDC085
Buttons

Navy#13263B
Text

the artwork

Working with an illustrator

I hired illustrator Anna Schroder to draw the mascot and characters, then designed where they live on each page and built the layout around them.

Illustration of a green caterpillar wearing glasses and coding on a laptop while resting on a leaf
Home: the mascot at work. Illustration by Anna Schroder.
Illustration of a smiling cartoon instructor with long brown hair and arms raised
About: the instructor character
Illustration of a caterpillar emerging from a laptop, surrounded by HTML, CSS, and JavaScript doodles
Camps: a caterpillar and code doodles
from sign-up to day one

Registration and parent communication

Running camp meant a lot of emails. I automated the repetitive ones with Mailchimp so parents always knew what happened next.

  1. 01

    Register

    Parents sign up on the site: choose a camp and a morning or afternoon session, rent a laptop if needed, and opt in or out of photos.

  2. 02

    Automatic info

    Registering sends camp details and payment options by email, automated through Mailchimp.

  3. 03

    Welcome

    Once payment came in, families got a welcome email with the session recap and what to bring each day.

  4. 04

    Daily updates

    During camp I emailed parents a daily recap, also through Mailchimp.

behind the site

Running the whole camp

The website was one part of the job. As founder and instructor, I also handled the rest of the business. Marketing included a neighborhood Facebook post with a flyer and an Instagram account.

  • Curriculum development
  • Marketing
  • Communications
  • Parent outreach
  • Materials prep
  • Tech setup
Results ~$3,000

earned within 2 months of deployment, from a camp I founded with original curriculum.

why I do this

The reason I love what I do

A camper wrote me this note after camp. They loved coding in Scratch and Lua and the science experiments, and wished they could do it all year. Moments like this are why I teach.

“I wish I could do it all year!”

A Camp Coderpillar camper
A handwritten thank-you note on a collaged paper frame. It reads: Dear Ms. Izzie, thank you for teaching me how to code in Scratch and Lua. I loved it very much! I wish I could do it all year! I also loved the experiments. They were all so cool and fun. Your student. The signature is blurred, and the note is decorated with small crayon drawings of a rocket, a sun, and a computer.
A thank-you note from a camper. Name blurred.Open full size ↗
More work

See the site live

The mockups above are the design; the real thing is online.

campcoderpillar.com ↗ Back to portfolio