It all really started a couple of years ago with I backed the Hello Ruby on KickStarter. I had this vision (or dream) of teaching my daughter to code and creating stuff with her.
I tried to pique her interest a couple of times but she wasn’t there yet, until about 2–3 months ago when we really started to work together and I started teaching her to code.
This experience has been amazing, we spend quality time together working through problems and finding solutions.
One of the first exercises I gave her was to think of simple things she does during the day and write the stages one after the other so you can read it to someone and have them replicate it 100%. Tasks like brushing teeth, making pancakes and other fun stuff like that.
After working on that we started working on mazes and “telling” a computer how to work through the maze without getting stuck.
Lots of fun, really.
Fun Flash Cards
Nesli is now in the first grade and one of the assignments she got through school was learning to identify words immediately.
Simple words like “of”, “it”, “they”, “the” should be automatic in the brain. I didn’t really think about it before until talking to her teacher.
The way it works is that you create flash cards every week, and you work on a set of 10 words at a time. You show the kid a card for a second and have them tell you the word.
When we looked at it together, we said it would be an awesome idea for an application for my phone (nothing like dad’s phone for a kid :)).
Before even starting to code we sat down and designed the app. I really wanted the process to be a collaboration between us and not me telling her how you design an application. I asked guiding questions and she really took to the process.
The final product
Wow!
Fun Flash Cards is one of my proudest moments as a dad and as an engineer. I open this application 3–4 times a day on my phone and just smile.
We created this together, as a team. We thought about the problem, we sketched with a pencil, we coded it. I am over the moon with it, really.
In terms of code complexity, this is likely the simplest task I had since learning to code when I was 14. But, I learned to code alone and my daughter is learning to code with her dad. This means the world (and more) to me.
KensoDev/fun-flash-cards_Contribute to fun-flash-cards development by creating an account on GitHub._github.com
Why it succeeded
Our kids play with our phone a lot and of course the iPad, I think having her create a product for a device she uses every day was what triggered the creativity.
She knows how to use apps and she knew immediately how to create her app, things like “click” and “swipe” were natural definitions.
Making it her own with selecting the color and making it look like a chalk-board also helped to really connect with the idea.