There are different ways for children to have unbridled fun in the summer. Playing and exploring in the Great Outdoors is fantastic, but many kids feel at home with video games.
Parents are understandably wary about their kids spending too much time indoors on screens, but learning to code video games is a productive and valuable hobby that kids genuinely love!
Please keep reading to learn more about what you can expect from summer sessions in the best online coding programs.
Daily Sessions for a Deep Dive
Some of the best online coding classes for kids offer summer sessions that are structured more like a boot camp, where students spend a week or two learning every day for a few hours at a time rather than in weekly sessions.
The frequency of the sessions helps students take a deep dive into material that may be new to them, so they feel comfortable in the world of coding right away. The coding lessons will teach kids how to program their own video games, so while the substance of coding may be new, it’s taught within a framework they understand.
Small Classrooms with Young Teachers
Learning is more accessible when students don’t need to compete with their peers for their teacher’s attention, especially when they are young and the material is new. Ideally, online coding classes should have a ratio of four students per teacher.
It’s also essential that children learn how to program video games from teachers who also grew up playing them. Video games have a firm hold on adults looking back on the unadulterated pleasures of youth, and a teacher’s infectious joy trickles down to their students.
Kids need to learn from people with Computer Engineering or Computer Science backgrounds who know first-hand what it’s like to be a child who loves gaming.
Professional Coding Languages
Just because learning to code is so much fun doesn’t mean kids won’t learn core STEM skills and the actual coding languages professional programmers use all the time. Some programs teach drag-and-drop languages like Scratch, which gives beginners a sense of what coding is like.
But when it comes time to using coding skills later in the classroom or the workplace, it’s better to know the languages that video games and apps are built on, like Java, Unity, C#, C++, and more. If your child is lucky enough to go to a school that teaches programming, they’ll have a leg up.
It may seem surprising, but children can learn the very languages used to build games and apps that end up netting companies billions of dollars. Whether your child is learning to code for their eventual entry into the job market or simply to have some summer fun, they should learn professional coding languages.
Children love video games, and they’ll love programming them even more! This summer, enroll your child in online coding classes so they can program their own games.