Coding for Kids
Featured Maker: Oscar’s Favorite Subject in School Is Math!
Meet our newest Featured Maker, 5th grader Oscar from British Columbia! He likes climbing and playing water polo. Oscar recently spoke with us about his experience coding with Tynker.
How did you get introduced to Tynker?
We had this project at school where we could choose between music or making a story. There was a bunch of different choices. One of them was coding. And I chose coding.
How did you learn to use Tynker?
At first, I didn’t use tutorials that much. I was mostly just looking at the community when I saw an interesting code, something that looked like I wanted. I looked at how it was done. And then I built off of that code and made it do what I wanted to do.
Have your coding skills improved since you started using Tynker?
At the beginning, I was like whaaaaat? Now it’s like, that’s super easy peasy. Now that’s super easy to code.
How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured?
Very happy since it’s like a birthday present.
What’s your favorite project you’ve made so far?
Probably my cookie clicker, which I’m still working on. It’s like a series. I’ve already done one. Right now I’m working on one and adding stuff each time.
How do you get inspiration for your projects?
Sometimes it’s just games on the web that I look at. Sometimes it’s from the community. I use that idea and modify it and make my own.
Why do you like to code?
It’s just fun, and it’s very satisfying when the code works and if the game is fun.
What’s your favorite way to use code?
The variables probably. I use at least one variable in every single game that I make.
What do you do with a project when you’re done with it?
I publish it. I mean, I also play it quite a few times if it’s a game.
What are you planning to make next?
Continue improving my cookie clicker
What’s the best thing about Tynker?
The amount of blocks that there are. Like almost every other block coding platform, it only has like a few useful blocks. But then with Tynker, there’s like so many useful blocks and there’s just so many more possibilities.
How do you think learning to code has prepared you for the future?
I could become like a website designer or something. And I could make a living off of that because I started at a young age so it’d be really good.
What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker?
Variables almost always help because you can just do like everything with this.
Do you have an idea of what you want to be when you grow up?
Professional climber or web design or something in game design or something like that.
Bonus: What’s a fun fact about you?
I only started coding a year ago.
Parent Questions
Oscar’s mother, Stephanie, spoke with us about her son learning to code with Tynker:
Oh, it’s really fun. I knew he was spending a lot of time on Tynker. But it wasn’t until he’d probably been doing it for a few months that I started to see his projects. And then I realized that he wasn’t just doing little tweaks to existing projects. He was actually generating a lot of original code and I was really impressed by that.
I’m an engineer myself. So, I’ve definitely I’ve always encouraged coding and other projects and even though we’ve had some exposure to coding, I don’t feel like any of those like really caught on as much as Tynker, like he’s really just gotten much deeper into it. And that’s been fun to watch.
What benefits do you think coding has for Oscar?
I think that it’s great to have ownership of a project and I think that there’s a lot of pride that goes along with having the community aspect and being able to share your work and also to be able to build on others. I think that interaction is really good in terms of mimicking how the real world can actually work in jobs because you’re never just coding by yourself. It’s always a team and so I like that you get a little bit of that mix in Tynker.
It might be a little bit obvious, but I think it exercises the brain in great ways in terms of logic and helping apply that to other classes like math. And the art, he really loves that so many of his projects are just kind of beautiful, mesmerizing art in motion and so I like that you get the mix of the technical and the artistic.
Do you feel that he’s better prepared for the future?
Yes! I mean code is so ubiquitous now. I think that it’s becoming a life skill so the more comfortable anybody is with coding is going to help them with so many jobs, not just technology jobs I mean I think it really is in every single profession now. So absolutely, it does help with the future.
Thank you!
We want to thank Oscar and his mother for taking the time to speak with us about coding with Tynker. We can’t wait to see what he creates next – HAPPY CODING!
