On the plus side, the boys are getting outside more and are having to come up with creative ways to entertain themselves. On the downside, I am tortured with a chorus of “i’mmmmmm booorrrrreeed” or am breaking up more fights because many of their non-screen related games happen to involve wrestling, hitting etc.
Le sigh. What’s a mom to do?
So i’ve been trying to figure out a way to make screen time more positive all around and perhaps make it a touch more educational than dropping into yet another round of Fortnite or Pub-G. Both my kids seem to have great aptitude when it comes to math and logic, both are very visual learners, and love being creative. So what if we could use these strengths in combination with their screen time and teach them how to be the next Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Markus Persson?
Recently I discovered a cool website that teaches kids how to code called http://studio.code.org which teaches kids the fundamentals of programming (like loops and conditionals and functions and debugging) in a super fun and visual way (eg. “blocks” of code called Blockly). Even better, they use pop culture like Minecraft, Angry Birds and Disney as part of their learning tools to keep your little coders on task and having fun. And even cooler yet is once your budding Zuckerberg finishes a challenge, you can toggle to see the actual code (JavaScript) that is running the program or maze which gets techy nerds like me all giddy inside.
There are some other great sites and apps that can help your hackers in training learn to love code as well. Check them out!
Kodable – Read this great article on 5 reasons to teach your kids to code
Hopscotch and Tynker – Free visual programming apps for your wee ones available in the iTunes store
Codemonkey – Uses “CoffeeScript” programming language (lol) to teach in a fun and visual way!
