With summer approaching, many parents are looking to find their children something to participate in once school’s out. And while, normally, parents are limiting their child’s time on their smartphones, there are apps that will make you want your kid to engage with them 24/7–and with good reason.
Why not take your children from tech consumers to producers by allowing them to learn to code? Here, ReadWrite outlines apps that will help kids get their code on:
Age Range: 8 and up
Language: Original visual programming language
Platform:Â Browser-based
Created at MIT Media Labs, the visual language and interface boasts more than 3 million uploaded user projects. Â Kids can begin dragging and dropping sprites and blocks of code to create robust projects.
Age Range: 5 to 8
Language: Basic
Platform:Â iPad
The makers of Hopscotch have created an iPad app that teaches the basics of programming. Children can use ultra-basic blocks in order to animate Daisy the Dinosaur by just dragging one-word commands like “roll,†“jump,†and “grow,†into the programming space, and press play. Players can see a direct relationship between the commands they assign and the actions Daisy takes.