Friends of mine calling me to ask if they should enroll their kids to the online learning courses offered by many companies now a days and they don’t know if its fit or suitable for them or their child or not. The TV ads are literally making parents fell that they’re missing on something if their child is not learning coding. But there’s nothing like that. In fact, in the early ages, its better that child uses computer only out of interest and not to learn something online which is not part of their studies. For those kids who are interested and their parents are not getting if they should enroll to a class or not, am providing here a list of simple and free resources which they can teach to their kids at home without paying anything to anyone.
These resources are in fact the same one which people are teaching online and charging for it :(. Ironic but its true. See teaching coding to kids is not that mandatory but its a fun activity and I believe it should be fun only
So explore these things on your own with your kids and let them have fun with computer coding without paying a dime to anyone
Scratch
Without a doubt, scratch is the leading software developed for teaching coding to kids and all the younger ones. Developed by MIT Media Lab, Scratch proves to be the best introduction to programming for anyone, for both the parent and the kids alike, read more here. One can do many things with scratch by simply just using the blocks, it does not coding by typing words, instead it uses some pre-available blocks which are to be picked and placed one after another to create a code. There are plenty many things to do from playing your own voice to even creating games which can be done with scratch.
What all is needed to learn App Inventor: A Computer/Laptop, Internet Connection
Who Can learn scratch: Any kid who can read English
Can I teach scratch to my kids myself: Yes, if you can read English
code.org, as the name suggests is perhaps the greatest resource site specially made to teach coding to the younger kids. code.org is a non-profit which is backed by many generous donors like Amazon, Facebook, Google, the Infosys Foundation, Microsoft, and many such who have not only contributed money but also their resources also to bring code.org to life. Code.org provides a very nice curriculum which can be followed to teach coding to the kids from age 4 and above very easily. Whats more interesting with code.org is that they gamification of coding with actual games that kids know about. Kids can do coding exercises with angry birds, minecraft, star wars and alike games which they’re already attached with. And it brings whole lot of fun for both parents and kids to solve these challenges. Depending upon the age of your child you can start right away with coding with him/her. Check it all here
What all is needed to learn with code.org: A Computer/Laptop, Internet Connection
Who can learn App Inventor : Anyone who can use computer, and read English
Can I teach App Inventor to my kids: Yes, if you can use computer, and read English
Code Club
Code club is a non-profit from UK which aims in creating code clubs in schools and communities worldwide to spread the computer programming education among the kids. Its a very nice initiative which is connecting thousands of volunteers across the globe who are arranging code clubs in their schools or community and teach younger ones about coding. If you’re an interested parent, you can also start code club in your community / society.
The reason for including code club here, is that they’ve created very nice short lesson based projectes to teach
Scratch
Python Programming
HTML and CSS
Hardware like Raspberry Pi and related tools
So if you’ve chosen to start with scratch, you’ll find interesting projects for getting started with scratch here on code club website. These tutorials can act as guide to you as parent as well as to your kids for learning the coding
While the idea of turning your kid into a genius coder or next startup founder is very good, we should not forget the overall development of our child. All above mentioned sites are 100% free to use and explore coding for anyone who is willing to learn. Use them as much as you want and explore the world of coding with kids
In this global crisis of Corona, we’re all locked down in our homes and there is really nothing to do. Thats why I decided to write about few things to do with kids
Its very difficult for us grown-ups also to stay just at home and do nothing and it does take a lot of toll on mental health as well. Moreover those with kids know situation much better. Kids are home all the time, they can’t even go and meet their friends and play something. This is very difficult. Adults at time, can cope with their mind to be completely isolated from others. But with kids, the situation is difficult to understand. They’ve never seen such situations. And probably, they’re not getting it fully why they’re locked down at home. Apart from being grateful to our kids for showing understanding, there are few things that we can do with them to spend time. And not only to spend time, but to utilize it little productively as well. So I am sharing few nicer ways to engage children at home and yet have fun at it
List of 10 Things to do with kids at home
So here’s the list of 10 things you can do with your kids right now at home
1. Play with them
10 things to do with your kids
As difficult as it may seem, but this is the best thing we can do with our kids right now. Just play with them. It’ll give a mental relaxation for both the parent and kids alike. A good time off from netflix and all the mobile games. There are plenty many of indoor games that you can play with you kids to stay feeling fresh and active. Here are some indoor games that you can do with your kids. Off course there are plenty of things to list here. And am sure you already are doing some of these things, but just to expand the ideas
And believe me, your kids don’t need some real high tech video games, they need you. And no matter what you buy for them, it’ll never fill the void of spending a real time with their father or mother.
To make the play more interesting, Yacine from this website has put a very nice list of 70+ games which you can play with your kids at home. The interesting part of this blog post is there’s a printable downloadable PDF given on the same, check out it here or this link https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/interactives/kids-games/
Have fun with kids, its the no 1 thing you can do with your kids at home.
2. Cook with Kids
10 things to do with your kids
I don’t know if cooking is your hobby or not. But believe me, kids of almost every age loves cooking. They feel very excited to even think about an idea of cooking something themselves. And you really need no fancy dishes to make. You can start with some simple recipe including how to make tea and simple day to day stuffs. I would rather say, start with something simpler so they get interested and then move forward Here are some recommendations of activities.
Make Hot milk chocolate, make an evening of entire family gathering with the hot chocolate made by your younger master or angel
A Khichadi lunch prepared by your kids will make your morning fade away
Make your afternoon interesting with cakes made at home. You don’t need an oven for it, you can create one with a large PAN Filled with lots of salt to produce oven like heat and bake anything
Spanish omelette, very tasty and interesting to cook. Kids just love this.
Noodles
Roti Pizza ( using the chapati we do at home, just spread sauce, veggies and cheese on it and place on a flat PAN by covering it from top, tastes very good)
Sweet and Sour Lemonade
Oreo Milk shake (If you can get hold of Oreo biscuit and Vanila ice cream and some milk, just put them together and whisk in a blender, a tasty oreo shake is ready which everyone likes)
Ice Candy ( Refrigerate the lemonade or any other flavored drinks made at home in a kulfi maker to make nice and crunchy ice candies)
3. Exercise with Kids
10 things to do with your kids
Staying just home has one very big drawback. And that is inactivity!!
Inactivity is not good for parents as well as children. In regular times, children play alot. They jump, they run and they do hundreds of activities daily. But in a stay home situation, there is hardly any movement that kids get to do. And so is the case of parent. Not going to work, not moving out of home, will easily make one inactive robbing you of physical health. Moreover the mental depression that comes is a different story altogether. Doing light exercises with kids will keep both you and your kids happy and healthy. The exercise keeps the mental and physical well being in balance. There are many simple exercises which you can do, I’ll list some of the most effective one’s here which will give you a big energy boost and mental peace as well.
Suryanamaskar, there cannot be much said about this one fantastic form of exercise / Yog Asan. read more in detail here about the great many benefits. Any kid of age 6 and above can do Surya Namaskar with you
Other beneficial Yog Asana’s, learn more and watch with instructional videos here. I’d recommend do not go for any wanna be Yog teacher and instead go to an authentic source like Isha foundation
Planks
Crunches
Jumping Jacks (with nice music, doing this just for 3-4 minutes is a great fun and workout)
Dance. Even my 3 year old moves like nothing else watching his favorite songs. Better to watch videos on tv instead of that cramped out mobile screen
4. Read books with kids
10 things to do with your kids
If you (and) or your kids are never into reading books, this can be a very good times. No matter how much you hate books, after all all formal education we have got is through reading. We learn new recipe through reading. We learnt all our formal education through books. So there is no point denial of importance of books from life. And this can be a great chance to give this indulgence to yourself and your kids. But yes, there are limitations that if you don’t have books then its a problem. For a book worm like me and many other, the shelf’s are loaded with at least 100 books to begin with. But for a newbee, there’s a good way out. You can read it on phone. I won’t go in details of how much you or your kid should look at screen, you already know that. But I’m going to share a wonderful app on which you can read almost every famous title free of cost. Anybooks is a free android app to read books and it has almost every famous book in its ocean of libraries. I’ll recommend starting with simple stories with hidden lessons and then move to different genre. Here are some of my recommendations.
Chicken Soup for the soul
Harry Potter Series
Ramayan, kids are thrilled to read Indian mythology
Head over to Dogo Books, a Goodreads like platform for kids
and there are literally thousands of them like this and this
Moreover, you can switch to audiobooks as well. Listening to audio book is like watching an interesting movie which doesn’t end in 3 hours, instead runs for 10-30 or more hours. Audible has good collections of audio books as well
5. Teach computers to your kids
10 things to do with your kids
Depending on the age of your kids, you can start teaching them computer. If the kid is 4 years or older, its good time to start the basic mouse movements using the paint tool in windows. If the kid is in 1st std and onward, you must have started teaching her / him about typing using microsoft word and creating simple presentations. Teaching computer to your kids will be a great fun for kids of all ages and it’ll be a good long term knowledge that they’ll benefit from. Moreover, who knows, it’ll shake some dust off your minds too 😀
6. Create fun mobile apps with your kids
10 things to do with your kids
App Inventor is an Android App making platform provided by Google and now maintained by MIT USA. This follows the same syntax of putting blocks together as in Scratch which is a block based coding language. Whats more interesting for both parents and kids in this is they can create real apps for their phones and also download it onto their own phone. Imagine you and your kids made an app for sending sms to your wife by simply giving a single voice command, will it impress a mother and wife? I definitely thing she will. Whats most important is its endless fun to create things which you can run on your phone with your kids. Checkout app inventor here.
What all is needed to learn App Inventor: A Computer/Laptop, Android phone and Internet Connection
Who can learn App Inventor : Anyone who can use android phone, and read english
Can I teach App Inventor to my kids: Yes, if you can use android phone, and read english 🙂 🙂
7. Teach your kids programming (and yourself too)
10 things to do with your kids
A computer program is nothing but a way to instruct the computer to do something. This “something” can be anything from printing your name on screen to playing some sounds and also sending emails to creating games. When someone is doing programming, he’s solving some problem, he has to use paper and pencil and think on ways to achieve something. Yes, there is fixed outline in which he has to do this, but it involves 2 of the most important things
Problem Solving
Creative thinking
Programmer has to dwell on to something to achieve and it mugs his mind to search for answer by doing some things / writing codes. off course we don’t want to give such painstaking programming assignment to our kids, but what if that assignment is fun to do. What if it excites them and makes them want to do it more often. There are plenty good techniques to teach coding to your kids which you can read here
But if you’re serious about it, then best to start with python programming. Its simpler and both you can your kids can learn it together. You can take up an online course like this to aid you in learning python in a systematic way instead of running through jungle of online tutorials and finding right one.
8. Create videos with them
10 things to do with your kids
You know it for a long time. You and your kids have been watching youtube for a long time. And we know that there are plenty of youtube channels where parents and kids are making some videos. It doesn’t matter whats the content of video. It doesn’t matter if you want to make money out of it or not. Just the idea of creating a youtube video will make your kids jump with excitement and fun. Just tell them about it and see their reaction. You don’t need anything to create youtube videos and upload them except your phone. Just record and upload it on youtube. And once published, show your kids their videos on big screen, they’ll go crazy.
9. Play video game on computer
10 things to do with your kids
I know many will scoff at this idea. But there’s a reason I didn’t wrote “play video games”. But I wrote “play video game on computer”. Playing on a computer with a proper game controller has enourmous benefits. First video games are fun, kids absolutely love it. Moreover gaming in limited timeframe has several benefits like
Foster patience in kids. As they fail again and again to complete a level, they get frustrated, its a nice dosage to teach them patience. (Cuphead, one of the most difficult yet fun game)
Socialism. For remotely locked down kids, playing online with their friends can be a good way to socialize them for a while (online)
Joy of Competition (any and every game)
Problem Solving (minecraft / little big planet)
Brings parents and kids together (FIFA games)
Just make sure the games you buy for your kids are appropriate for their age groups.
10. Start a family blog
10 things to do with your kids
You went to a nice vacation last Christmas and have all your photos in your google photos album and you can see them once a while. Its good, yes its off course good. But what if you create a family blog of your own? What if you create a blog post of every tour you made. Every single recipe you and your kids make? Every good/bad thing happened for you? It’s a kind of journal writing itself but a very pictorial one. Blog is just a log created on internet which can have text, images and videos everything which can be viewed by just scrolling down the page. You blog has many benefits, but most importantly, it’ll be like writing your life journey on a blog. When your kids will be grown up, they’ll be looking at your entire life, how they grew up and what all they did in their childhood through your blog. Not to mention you can make money from your blog as well. But that is not the point here. Point is to give your kid a hobby and asset like no other kids by starting a blog and letting him write there.
You can create a blog with blogger or wordpress. WordPress is highly recommended. Because with wordpress, you can create a simple free blog in minutes. And in future, you can create an entire website around your blog as well. This website is also created using wordpress. 🙂
So this was my short list of engaging kids at home. Please add in comments what you love doing with your kids and any other addition to the list and your views on this.
For further more activities, I found this article very nice
In this post, am sharing you some useful code for sending email through python. In this program, we will use the python’s smtplib library to send emails using raspberry pi
here we discuss 2 types of mail sending codes, one is simple email sending and other is sending email with attachments
The below codes are tested to work on python 3.6 and onward versions of Python
Every day, we’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about teaching programming to the younger ones. And many schools around the world are also including things like programming, electronics and robotics in their curriculum calling it STEM. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. But what’s in it for a layman? What if I’m a parent who is non-techie, how do I know what’s STEM and how its useful for my kids or not? Well, lets put some lights on it.
If you’re reading this story, means you’re using a computer or smartphone. Talking about computers, there were many people who revolutionized the personal computers and software industry. And plenty many people know about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who created not only great industry product but also amassed a high wealth for themselves. Now, what caused these people to achieve such great heights? for example, if we study about the life of Bill Gates, its clear that he was interested in Coding from a very early Age, and so is it with many icons in the Industry. They started learning computer coding early, it gave them lot of time to absorb the in and outs of the coding and enough time to create great products and businesses around it.
As a parent, What’s in it for me?
Be their Trainer
This was just to clarify what learning computer coding at early age can achieve. But we all don’t want to make our kids entrepreneurs isn’t it? (or Do we?) It depends on person to person, their choices in life and the choices their kids make in their lives. Any parent today, won’t force his choice of career to their child. Its not required at all that every kid should become next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. But what coding can to early minds is really fascinating and worth involving our kids into. Kids, specially in their schooling days can absorb any new knowledge very easily.
Today’s kids
But in today’s schooling practice (especially in India) every kid is like forced to be in some kind of Rat race. Schools and parents alike force them to do many things without even asking if they want to do it or not. And its funny, not every parents will agree on this, but parents want their child to do everything and excel at everything. Its a very common site for me to see a child attending 8am-4pm school then going for a tennis class, 5pm–6pm and then going for some specialised maths class 7pm — 9pm and so on. Parent want their kid to do everything, he/she should be very good in school and academics, should be able to dance well, should be able to play tennis/football/cricket/what not, should be a good singer, should be a good painter. What the hell? Parent want their kid to be everything they ever dreamed of doing, just because they have money to send them to different classes. Is anything going wrong here?
Whats going wrong?
Wrong thing happening is, kids are loosing interest in many things. They’re not looking at world with open view and most importantly, the’re not asking questions. Its a feedback to me from many reputed school owners and private institutions, that the problem happening is kids are thinking very less. Their parents or teachers are doing all the thinking but the kids are not. If at all we have to gift something to our kids, it should be the capability to think, think wider, think broader, think breaking all the rules. And that is what computer coding makes them to do
A computer program is nothing but a way to instruct the computer to do something. This “something” can be anything from printing your name on screen to playing some sounds and also sending emails to creating games. When someone is doing programming, he’s solving some problem, he has to use paper and pencil and think on ways to achieve something. Yes, there is fixed outline in which he has to do this, but it involves 2 of the most important things
Problem Solving
Creative thinking
Programmer has to dwell on to something to achieve and it mugs his mind to search for answer by doing some things / writing codes. off course we don’t want to give such painstaking programming assignment to our kids, but what if that assignment is fun to do. What if it excites them and makes them want to do it more often. So are there any such things available which offers my kids to do such things? are they paid or free 🙂 Lets see
Scratch
Without a doubt, scratch is the leading software developed for teaching coding to kids and all the younger ones. Developed by MIT Media Lab, Scratch proves to be the best introduction to programming for anyone, for both the parent and the kids alike, read more here. One can do many things with scratch by simply just using the blocks, it does not coding by typing words, instead it uses some pre-available blocks which are to be picked and placed one after another to create a code. There are plenty many things to do from playing your own voice to even creating games which can be done with scratch.
What all is needed to learn App Inventor: A Computer/Laptop, Internet Connection
Who Can learn scratch: Any kid who can read English
Can I teach scratch to my kids myself: Yes, if you can read English 🙂
App Inventor
App Inventor is an Android App making platform provided by Google and now maintained by MIT USA. This follows the same syntax of putting blocks together as in Scratch. Whats more interesting for both parents and kids in this is they can create real apps for their phones and also download it onto their own phone. Imagine you and your kids made an app for sending sms to your wife by simply giving a single voice command, will it impress a mother and wife? I definitely thing she will. Whats most important is its endless fun to create things which you can run on your phone with your kids. Checkout app inventor here
What all is needed to learn App Inventor: A Computer/Laptop, Android phone and Internet Connection
Who can learn App Inventor : Anyone who can use android phone, and read english
Can I teach App Inventor to my kids: Yes, if you can use android phone, and read english 🙂 🙂
code.org, as the name suggests is perhaps the greatest resource site specially made to teach coding to the younger kids. code.org is a non-profit which is backed by many generous donors like Amazon, Facebook, Google, the Infosys Foundation, Microsoft, and many such who have not only contributed money but also their resources also to bring code.org to life. Code.org provides a very nice curriculum which can be followed to teach coding to the kids from age 4 and above very easily. Whats more interesting with code.org is that they gamification of coding with actual games that kids know about. Kids can do coding exercises with angry birds, minecraft, star wars and alike games which they’re already attached with. And it brings whole lot of fun for both parents and kids to solve these challenges. Depending upon the age of your child you can start right away with coding with him/her. Check it all here
What all is needed to learn with code.org: A Computer/Laptop, Internet Connection
Who can learn App Inventor : Anyone who can use computer, and read English
Can I teach App Inventor to my kids: Yes, if you can use computer, and read English 🙂 🙂
Swift Playgrounds
Do you love ipad more than a computer/laptop? Probably you do and so do your little ones too. With Swift Playgrounds, apple has opened a whole new opportunities for parents and kids to learn the programming with the ease of using just the ipad in a very nice gamified way. You can solve many puzzles on Switft Playgrounds by writing simple coding, again no previous knowledge is required to use Swift Playgrounds. The best thing with Switft Playgrounds is how its described on apple website “What you see is what you code: Create code on the left side of your screen and instantly see the results on the right — with just a tap” and its really as simple as its written
What all is needed to learn Swift Playgrounds: an iPad, period.
Who can learn App Inventor : Anyone who can use iPad and off course read English 🙂
Can I teach App Inventor to my kids: Yes, if you can use iPad, and read English 🙂 🙂
Code Club
Code club is a non-profit from UK which aims in creating code clubs in schools and communities worldwide to spread the computer programming education among the kids. Its a very nice initiative which is connecting thousands of volunteers across the globe who are arranging code clubs in their schools or community and teach younger ones about coding. If you’re an interested parent, you can also start code club in your community / society.
The reason for including code club here, is that they’ve created very nice short lesson based projectes to teach
Scratch
Python Programming
HTML and CSS
Hardware like Raspberry Pi and related tools
So if you’ve chosen to start with scratch, you’ll find interesting projects for getting started with scratch here on code club website. These tutorials can act as guide to you as parent as well as to your kids for learning the coding
Verdict
To be honest, there are many different platforms where you can teach programming to your kids and are also free, but I’ve mentioned the ones here which have created the most impact, and tools which are be all and end all type. offcourse there are plenty of things to be explored further, but any one of these tools is great way to get started and will definitely keep you and your kids hooked for months and always wanting for more things to do. But if you really want to develop the growing brain of your child the biggest thing that is going to help your child is YOU. Yes, its eventually up to you. By simply enrolling your kids to the classes who are teaching coding won’t help, your kids will get the most of fun and knowledge both if they’re doing it with you, I don’t know if you’re a father / mother / guardian and I don’t know what is your profession. But you have to give time to your kids. Just spend one weekend with them doing little coding and see how happy they’ll be. Let me know if it helped you at all.
All the kids, regardless of their age and schooling wants to spend more time with their parents, so the most important part is, how much are you willing to give your time to younger ones? Believe me, give them your time now, because they’re going to grow up too soon 🙂
