Let Your Kids Get Creative At Home with Tynker!

Let Your Kids Get Creative At Home with Tynker!

Tynker has been happy to do our part in helping kids adjust to being at home all day by making our coding curriculum free. And now we’re starting to see the results.

Kids all around the world have been showing us the incredible projects they’ve been coding while schools have been closed: Games. Apps. Art. Music. And more! With over 3,700 coding activities to choose from, Tynker is a great way to make kids’ screen time creative and productive.

Though everyone’s situation is unique, we’re all going through a little bit of the same thing and we hope you can get a little inspiration from what these kids and their parents shared with us. We know we did!

Coding Can Be a Lot of Fun

“My son loves the Super Squad, Game Studio, and Greeting Studio the best,” says Jessica, the mother of 5-year-old Jekobe from St. Louis. Jessica’s also a fourth-grade teacher whose students participate in our Hour of Code activities, which introduce computer programming to kids in a fun, creative way. So, she was able to give us valuable insight on how those modules inspired her students to consider career paths they’d never thought of before.

For now, though, Jessica’s just happy with how much Tynker has captured Jekobe’s attention. “I’ve added Tynker Jr. to his daily to do list for homeschooling. He likes working on Tynker Jr. so much he’ll request it! He thinks it’s just a game. He doesn’t even realize he’s learning to use block coding. He’s 5 but Tynker Jr. can hold his attention for over 30 minutes of unassisted trial & error learning and playing.”

Other parents had similar results with Tynker, finding it an excellent way for their kids to learn coding skills that might one day be valuable to their careers. Still, to a kid, it just seems like fun!

“This was the first time we’ve tried Tynker and it’s been amazing for them,” said Loraine of Tennessee, whose sons Colton (9) and Lucas (6) both love Tynker. “They are having fun learning how to code and look forward to playing it. It’s like a game to them. It’s fun for me too!”

Douglas, a father from Canada who recently signed up for Tynker’s lifetime plan, admitted that spending any amount of money right now was a difficult decision. Ultimately, though, the experience with the Tynker has been “amazing” for his son, Evan and kept him thoroughly engaged. 

Setting Kids on a New Path

Some parents have even commented that despite being stuck at home, Tynker is providing their children an opportunity to learn skills they’re not even getting in school! “My son has had a very fun and active time learning how to code,” Marlo says of her son, Noah. “He says his school doesn’t teach him this kind of material, so he is very glad that he has Tynker. It’s kept him occupied for hours and he doesn’t get bored.”

Dwane from Canada loves how Tynker has given his son, Jack, an opportunity to flex his creative muscles while adding to his coding expertise, which he sees as a path to a  possible career in engineering. “Jack loves to invent games,” says Dwane. “Coding gives him a way to bring some of his many ideas to life. He started out with Scratch programming and was part of a Lego League robotics tournament and is now looking to learn a ‘real’ programming language. Tynker’s Python course was a great first step for Jack on this journey during this downtime from school.”

“We’re both new to Tynker and I understand the risk with allowing communication on the internet but being a part of a team and working together is a big part of engineering in the real world,” Dwane continues. “It would be great to have a team or groups working on a challenge together. I have already recommended Tynker to other parents and will continue to do so.”

Jacob was especially grateful that Tynker allowed his daughter, Sundae, to continue a passion she had just started developing before school closed down. “A coding class was just about to be offered at my daughter’s school when they closed,” Jacob explained. “She still expressed a lot of interest in coding, but we hadn’t been able to find many resources which we could afford in order to fulfill that interest. However, with classes that Tynker has made available, she has been asking me to practice coding every day since then. She really seems to enjoy it so far, and I am happy to see her take such an interest in a valuable skill like this, especially at such a young age.”

“My child loves going to school, so the last two weeks have been tough as he misses his classmates and teachers,” says Ethan’s mom, Laura. “However, when his teacher mentioned the extra access to Tynker, his whole face lit up! He has used it to build and create and is now actively engaged with classmates as they share their work through Minecraft. I love that he is not just gaming, but learning a valuable skill set, as well. Thank you for making this resource available.”

“Who knows?” Laura concluded. “This quarantine may have set a path that my son will follow into a career someday!”

Bringing Family Together

With parents and children spending all day under one roof, Tynker has also created an opportunity for parents to spend time working on projects with their kids. 

Alessandro is a computer engineer from Italy and has been grateful that Tynker has offered him an opportunity to share a little bit of what he does with his own kids. “My child is using Tynker to learn coding these days where we are forced to stay home due to COVID-19. I’m a computer engineer so Tynker is a big opportunity for me to teach and share my work and passion, for him to learn something funny and for [both of us to] share a pleasant time together.”

Parents are especially grateful when their older children have taken the time to include their younger siblings in what they’re doing. “My son was excited to be able to code something and then test it in his Minecraft World,” Rhea said of her son, Riley. “He even included his little brother by inviting him into his Minecraft World to help test what he built.” 

“The kids really enjoy coding and spend time on Tynker as part of their daily school routines,” Samantha’s mother Molly told us. “It gives them something fun to look forward to together.”

Independent Learning

We’re excited that Tynker is having a big effect on how kids are learning and how we’ve got them thinking about new career paths. But we also know that many parents have been thrust into the role of full-time teacher in addition to juggling the demands of their own careers, which they are suddenly forced to do from home as well… and it can be more and more difficult to keep energetic, restless kids occupied as the weeks go on. That’s where Tynker comes in!

Kari is the mother of 10-year-old Jad from Illinois, who has been doing an intermediate lesson on Tynker every day since schools closed. “I especially like that he can complete the lessons independently,” Kari says. “His latest project is a variation on Spin Draw. He added code to make the artwork more customizable. He and his younger siblings have been busily making original artwork with his new program Whirl Draw.”

Heather, who teaches robotics herself and whose daughter Riley is a big fan of Tynker, says the thing that makes her recommend Tynker to other parents most is the independent nature of the programs. “Students can do this without [parents] help,” Heather says. “But then they can show them the awesomeness after they finish the work!”

Tynker is particularly helpful for parents who need to keep working from home, even when their children finish their schoolwork. “I’m working from home and homeschooling my son,” Ayla says of her son Timur. “His school posts his daily lessons and I help him through them. He finishes by 12 but I have to keep working until 4!” So, Ayla tells us she gets Timur started on Tynker and his learning continues. 

“It is amazing how laser-focused my son is when it comes to learning with Tynker,” says Michael, father of 10-year-old Joshua from Tulsa. “We have a set time each day for him to learn how to code, and he looks forward to it and makes preparations so that when it’s time to code his other responsibilities are taken care of. I have already recommended this to many of my friends with children so that they can learn a useful skill while our country has this down time.”

Rami from Sweden mentions that his son, Andulrahman, is having such a good time right now, he doesn’t want it to end. “He is getting more free time to explore more tricks in programming. He is preparing for a big project for his game. He hopes that the closed-down situation goes even longer!” Of course, Rami adds: “I hope not.”

We’re with you, Rami. No one wants this situation to go on any longer than it has to, and we’re all looking forward to a day soon that kids can get back in the classroom, run around outside, or just get a chance to hang out with their friends. In the meantime, though, Tynker is happy to help any way we can. Remember, we’re all in this together.

Looking for more ways to keep kids occupied while they’re cooped up at home? Check out these fun activities and free coding resources! We’d also like to share a free kid’s book with you about COVID-19 that will give your kids a better understanding of what a virus is and how it spreads, while making this tough topic a little bit easier to talk about.