Coding for Kids
coolmomtech.com
08/30/13
During a recent discussion with a group of young kids about what they wanted to be when they grow up, I was surprised when one little boy piped up and said, ‘I want to make the next Angry Birds!” Luckily, little tech-minds like him might be able to get a big jumpstart on coding with this very cool website.
Tynker is a neat website geared towards kids in grades 4-8 to help them learn the basics of coding. Seems a little unlikely that your 9-year-old would come home and start whipping up HTML code in his bedroom, but Tynker makes coding much more accessible and fun by using a gaming and more visual format.
The $50 online course comes with 16 different chapters that kids can go through at their own pace. The chapters include guided lessons, puzzles, tutorials, quizzes and helpful demo videos that teach all the basics of programming.
To get kids started, kids build an animated character of their choice using the onscreen prompts and instructional tips and then can progress to having the character walk and move around. As kids program their way through the chapters, they learn more complex coding, and by the end of the course, can create a maze and manipulate the pieces. Pretty cool.
Tynker previously launched a version of their website for use in schools, which is still rolling out to more locations around the country. But if that’s not yet available in your area and you have a future Angry Birds developer on your hands, you might want to invest the $50 in this cool online course. You never know what your kid might develop. –Jeana
For more information on Tynker for Home and Schools, visit the company’s website.
