Sophia’s Canvas of Code

Our newest Featured Maker is Sophia from Nevada! She loves arts, crafts, and just building from scratch, which explains her love for coding. Along with crafting, Sophia loves to draw, make 3D objects, and play with Transformers!

Sophia has aspirations of becoming an engineer, and her favorite subjects in school include Art and P.E. Sophia sat with us to talk about her experience with Tynker and her love for coding!

How did you get introduced to Tynker and how long have you been coding? I’ve been coding for about 2 years now.

How have your coding skills improved since you started using Tynker? They have improved a lot!

How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? I was super excited!

What is your favorite project you’ve made so far? ‘Fox dress up.’ I like it because of all the costumes, and the fox is so cute.

Where did you get the idea for your favorite project? I got the idea for ‘Fox dress up’ from the community board. I saw a lot of cool dress up projects and I thought it would be cool if I made one.

How do you get inspiration for your projects? The inspiration I get is from my imagination! I just think of anything and make a project out of it.

‘dressup fun’

Why do you like to code? Because I get to make something, show it, share it, and have others play it!

What is your favorite way to use code? The time block! Like, wait 5 seconds, or wait 10 seconds.

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? When I finish a project, I make sure it’s perfect before I publish it.

What are you planning to make next? ‘Catch’!

What’s the best thing about Tynker? People can share what they have made and we can all learn from each other.

How do you think learning to code has prepared you for the future? I feel as if I am a step ahead!

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yes, definitely.

What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker? Use your imagination and experiment.

Shawn, Sophia’s dad, sat down with us as well to discuss what he thinks about Tynker and Sophia learning how to code. He told us: “I think it’s very exciting and fulfilling to see her go through some of the things I remember my father watching me experience when I first learned programming. He would say, ‘How did you do that?’ And now, I’m watching her go through the same thing and asking her, ‘How did you do that?’ And then this is a stepping block in many different avenues for engineering, science and robotics. It’s a great starting point!”

Shawn told us how he supports Sophia in her coding endeavors: “We encourage her to experiment. She wasn’t interested in Minecraft, then she was, and then she found out that she could use Tynker to customize her Minecraft!” There are critical soft skills, in addition to the technical skill of coding, that Sophia’s acquiring: “It’s taught her a lot about life and it’s helping her to learn processes and patience. Starting from an idea, building upon that idea and learning how to make things work. Testing and fixing, just the idea of making it do what you want to do. A very important part of that is the patience to learn and not get frustrated, to have the confidence to say, ‘I know I can figure this out.’ So you try it again, change the code a little bit, and then it does what you want it to do.”

We want to thank Sophia and Shawn for taking the time to explain their experience with Tynker and coding. We look forward to seeing Sophia’s future projects! Happy coding!