Teach your Kids to Code {a Bitsbox review}
Once upon a time there was a man who worked really hard at his job at Google. One day he came home from work and his daughter asked him what he had been doing all day.
“Hmmm…,” he thought, “How can I explain software engineering to my 4 year old?” While he didn’t have an answer right away, the question tumbled around in his mind. He eventually came up with little ways of explaining and demonstrating, only to realize that his daughter caught on to everything really quickly.
It was from this 4 year old girl’s question that Bitsbox was born. Of course, it didn’t really start out as a business, but instead as a series of simple activities a dad was making up for his daughter to explain what he did all day at work. One thing led to another, and he quit his job at google to start Bitsbox, a subscription company designed to teach kids coding.
The premise of Bitsbox is that coding is simply a language, just like Spanish, ASL, Chinese, etc. We know that kids learn other languages really well at young ages, so why not coding too?
What does each box include??
Each month, Bitsbox creates and ships a new themed box. The boxes include:
- A coding book full of apps to create.
- A deck of trading cards, each with a different app on them.
- A small toy that goes along with the theme of the box.
- A set of fun stickers and tattoos.
It’s super easy to get started.
- Open your Bitsbox and find out what’s inside. Theme for us- art!!
- Go online to bitsbox.com (using a computer with a physical keyboard). Quickly set up an account and get started! You could actually do this right now without being a subscriber of Bitsbox.
- Every account comes with a few free apps: Hello, World!, Moon Blaster and Crazy Driver. Go ahead and check them out now- I’ll wait! 🙂
- Flip through the coding book and choose an activity that looks fun. Asante chose 3D Printer.
- Click “New App” and type the 4 digit code in top. You’re ready to begin coding! Simply have you child type in the code that’s written in the booklet. You may think that your kid won’t like this because they don’t know how to type … and anyway, won’t this take forever? YES, it will take forever (at first)– but they will probably love it! Asante and Aly felt really proud of themselves and thought it was really cool that they were creating apps. If things got really long, I’d give them a little break by typing in a couple rows myself.
- Now play with the app! Experiment with it- what happens if you change x, y, or z? Bitsbox provides an online guide for parents for each box, but I found that the kids were really interested in making predictions and playing around with the code without need of the questions.
- You can also transfer the app to a mobile device (phone, iPad, etc.) with a scan of a simple QR code.
For those of you who are really into coding, you’ll want to know that the type of coding taught here is Javascript/HTML5 (you can visit the FAQ page for the reasoning behind that decision).ALSO, this just in– if you wanna try it out, Bitsbox offered you all a special code for 20% off– PEG20. Thanks, Bitsbox!!
Overall Impression
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[…] We had the opportunity to review this monthly coding subscription box and fell in love with it. You can read more here about all of our feelings for it! You can go their website to subscribe (you can choose the […]
[…] if you haven’t yet, take a second to read our initial review. You’ll learn all about how it got started, why coding is important for kids to learn, and […]
[…] Learning to code is like learning to write these days. It’s going to be an important skill for our kids to learn as they grow up and contribute to the world. One of our absolute favorite ways to code is using Bitsbox. It’s the only subscription box that I’ve bought with my own money because it’s 150% worth it to our family. I’ve written some about it– you can find me gush about it here as well as here. […]