Tag Archives: education

Parenting

Best Winter Activities for kids 2021

Winter break is just around the corner, which means we have to start planning winter activities to keep our kids happy and engaged while indoors. The holidays will feel different this year, but there are plenty of virtual and in-person options to have fun with our children. 

We’ve been working on a list of the best winter activities to keep your child entertained while getting prepared for their future in school and in life. We chose each of these activities thinking of their fun, educational and engaging nature. These winter activities can teach foundational STEM skills that will benefit our children in and out of the classroom.

So, get ready to find the perfect activity to make this winter unforgettable for you and your children.

Here are the best winter activities for kids in 2021:

Winter activities for kids

Build something amazing challenge

What better way to explore engineering than getting hands-on and start building with objects you can find at home! Gather any kind of object that could be useful: plastic cups, boxes, popsicle sticks, LEGO blocks, books, etc. Start exploring how different heights, shapes, sizes or weights work for different purposes and structures.

Idea: Create a challenge around the activity. Challenge your children to recreate an existing structure, like a famous building or bridge, with the objects you find at home.

Enjoy a family STEM movie night

Nurture your child’s interest in STEM with a STEM edition movie night! STEM is everywhere. You can find science, technology, engineering and math in almost any movie you choose. Gather the family and choose between science and technology documentaries, biographical films or science fiction flicks to find the role of STEM in the movie.

Idea: You can watch The Theory of Everything to be inspired by Steven Hawking’s life as a physicist. You can also try Radioactive, which highlights Madame Marie Curie’s brilliance and her courage as a female scientist. Hidden Figures is another great choice and tells the inspiring true story of pioneering female, African-American scientists at NASA. 

Create an offline game:

If your child loves playing games, it’s time to design their own! Game creation can really improve your child’s problem-solving skills, creativity and confidence. You can start by brainstorming and helping them think of the fundamentals of the game: How many people can play the game? Does the game have rules for the players? What is the game’s objective? What characters will the game include?  After that, it’s time to start building the game. Create a game board, characters, cards, dice, costumes or any other pieces needed to play the game.

Idea: You can choose to create a physical game or program the idea of the game online. 

Design a video game

Creating their own video game is an amazing way for kids and teens to put their ideas into action! If your child is more into online activities, you can integrate online STEM activities with a purpose. By learning a kid-friendly coding language children can combine their interests with valuable 21st century skills.

Idea: Try out our Online or In-person Winter Tech Camps. We’ve designed the ultimate Coding, STEAM, Game Design, Engineering, and Digital Design camp experience for children led by expert instructors with extensive virtual teaching experience!

Experiment with science

Explore science at home with easy-to-do science experiments! You can get your kids excited about science by trying out science experiments with nothing more than objects you can find around the house. You can try from making frozen bubbles or crafting crystallized ornaments to be amazed with magic milk. Next time your kids tell you they’re bored, set up one of these experiments and watch them be amazed!

Idea: Pinterest has an amazing repertory for fun experiments for kids, teens and the whole family! 

We really hope these fun winter activities will make this winter break fun and productive! 

Uncategorized

Is Minecraft really educational?

Since its release in 2011, Minecraft has become one of the most popular games ever made. It has a community of over 91 million players, and most of them are children and teenagers. But the real question is, how has a game like this became so good for education?

First of all, we need to really understand what Minecraft is. As we mentioned before, a decade after its release it’s one of the most popular games among children. What makes this game stand out from other online video games is the freedom it gives to its users.

What makes Minecraft different?

While the majority of video games give an objective or a plot to their players, Minecraft instead gives no instructions at all. The game allows you to figure out what you want to do in its world, giving complete creative freedom in what is called a sandbox format (think kids in a sandbox making their own creations in an open-ended way).

The world of Minecraft is completely made from 3D blocks; these blocks can be broken and picked up to build incredible structures. That’s why it is so often referred to as digital LEGOS as children can create anything they can imagine with these blocks. 

But that’s not all – players can edit source code that makes up Minecraft with mods (modifications) to change the game behavior or use its built in command line to write functions with coordinates, parameters, variables, conditional statements, and more to make special things happen in the game. Furthermore, players can modify the program using Java code and that’s when they start really diving deeper into code while playing their favorite game.

Finally, the game has a redstone system built into it that follows the same logic and rules as real engineering circuitry. So tapping into building mechanics and electronics inside of the game by learning to use its redstone system teaches kids the basics of engineering and circuits. Kids can use this to create anything from real computers inside the game to roller coasters, trap doors, firework displays, and even Rude Goldberg machines.

Is Minecraft really educational?

Now that we have a better understanding of how Minecraft works, let’s check some of the benefits of Minecraft!

Top reasons why Minecraft is good for education

Many of the reasons why kids love Minecraft are also the reasons why it is considered beneficial for their development. Minecraft engages their minds and lets them explore their creativity, problem solving skills, teamwork and even programming.

Minecraft encourages creativity

Probably one of the strongest benefits that Minecraft offers is its endless creative opportunities. With an average of 921.6 quadrillion blocks per world, children can really create anything that comes to their minds. Encouraging creativity at young ages plays an essential role in child development. Creativity allows children to find innovative solutions, new ways of doing things and create opportunities.

If your child wants to create an amusement park with giant dragons, then they can do it! The only restriction is that they have to find a way to do it with the famous building blocks (and perhaps some engineering and code). It’s all possible in Minecraft as this popular article in Edutopia explains.  

Minecraft reinforces problem solving skills

What makes Minecraft great to reinforce problem solving skills is that it offers an incredible amount of freedom to make decisions. This open ended problem-solving can help sharpen how well a child can face obstacles. Whether those problems are hypothetical or real life situations. Minecraft can encourage and expand this type of thinking. As the game allows players to set their own rules, players have freedom to find creative ways to solve problems that can appear while they’re creating projects in the game. 

So children can find themselves in situations where they must build a shelter, find food or escape from some fun monster by creating the solution on their own. This encourages children to think outside of the box to figure out how to solve complex situations. This can help children get used to quickly and efficiently solve real-world problems and use critical thinking while doing so. Even schools have noticed the potential in Minecraft including it into their classrooms as you can read here.

Minecraft introduces programming skills

Minecraft is an excellent tool to introduce children to programming, as it opens the door to fundamentals of coding. Because of the possibilities it gives to customize its code in Java, Minecraft contributes to developing this key learning skill.

It is important to highlight that Minecraft won’t exactly teach a programming language, but it introduces basic coding functions. Children can learn functions like IF, THEN, ELSE, and END which can be used to build all kinds of actions and mechanisms. Kids can deepen their programming skills by taking classes with experts and learn to customize the code to create effects. Some more eager and self motivated kids can even learn a lot of this on their own.

In fact, Minecraft has been the initial step for many video game designers and programmers. Kids can progress from coding their first automations in the game to developing complex game actions.

Conclusion

Now we hope you have a better idea about how Minecraft can be a really useful educational tool for children. Learning with it can prepare kids for the future by building core skills like critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. It can also even be an amazing tool to learn other skills such as math (think 3 dimensional geometry!)

To take learning in Minecraft to the next level, you can explore some of CodeREV Kids’ classes. Your child can start turning their passion into real promise!

Coding Education

Challenge Your Child to Take on a New Activity

The list of jobs of a good parent is long. Of course, the basics are necessary – food, clothing, education, etc. – but the list gets much longer as we think of ways for parents to help nurture their child’s intellect and curiosity. At CodeREV Kids, we have some unique ways to challenge your child through the joys of learning to code.

Coding can help your child for the rest of their life

There are plenty of activities your child can take part in, so you may be wondering – why coding? The truth is that there is a long list of reasons that coding can help your child. Not only will your child learn valuable skills today, but the demand for employees who can code is only projected to go up in future years. What’s more, it’s not just coders they’re looking for. Future jobs may seek out employees in all sectors who also know how to code.

Your child can build on a host of skills

When your child comes to one of our coding classes, they’ll learn about coding but they’ll be building other skills too. Our classes help foster critical thinking and team work. They help improve our students’ self-esteem and they can increase their interest in both math and science. Whether your goal is to help them specifically learn coding, or to boost their self-confidence or help them make new friends, it’s all available here.

Our instructors have unique backgrounds

When a company is staffing for a company like this, what do you think they should focus on more: Instructors who have experience teaching children or instructors who are experts in coding specifically? For other companies, this may be a difficult question to answer but for us it was easy: Our instructors are both. They come to us with vast experience teaching children and creating curriculum, but they’re also experienced in coding in the real world.

If you’re looking for a way to challenge your child, help prepare them for the future, and introduce them to new friends, then CodeREV Kids is a great choice. We offer a host of programs from Minecraft maneuvering to structured coding classes and even classes that allow your child to work at their own pace. We’ve done everything we can to ensure that all students can find the perfect balance between being challenged and feeling confident.

 

Education

3 Ways to Help Your Child Succeed When They’re the New Kid

Being the new kid in school can be scary and many kids simply aren’t sure how to handle it. As a parent, you may wish that you could tag along with them to make sure they make friends. Unfortunately, that’s not a realistic option – but it is realistic to following these three tips that can help you prepare your child for their first day as the new kid.

1. Encourage your child to be open to new ideas

At your child’s previous school, they likely got used to the way things worked. They may be resistant to doing things in a different way, and they may end up continuously telling their new teachers and classmates, “That’s now how we did it at my other school.” Explain to them that this can come across as though they’re being combative and encourage them to be open to doing things differently. When they’re the new kid, there’s nothing wrong with smiling, even if they don’t feel like it. In short, explain the advantages of acting better than they feel.

2. Teach them the one strategy that can help in almost any situation: Listening

If your child starts to become uncomfortable, tell them to concentrate on listening instead of trying to figure out what they’re supposed to say. The goal is for them to be interested, curious, and patient students. Learning to be a good listener can take some effort so be sure to teach them the basics of active listening.

3. Help them appreciate the adventure of starting a new school

The great thing about starting a new school is that it actually offers your child an opportunity to have an interesting and exciting adventure. Yes, they’ll miss their old friends and they’ll miss knowing where everything is and how it all works. They may feel lonely at first and they may feel less than confident about how to act. Make sure that they know this is normal but that they can use it to their advantage.

If your child is moving during the summer months, why not bring them into CodeREV Kids coding classes? They’ll get some practice talking to kids they don’t know and can start the school year already having some new friends. And of course, they’ll get some great skills by learning to code, how to use Minecraft, and much more. Reach out to us today to learn more!

Education

Turn Your Good Student into a Great Student

Has your child settled for being a good student when you know they could be a great student? If you see that your child is performing well, but know that there’s intellectual potential that’s not being used, then you may search for ways to help your student to become the great student you know they can be. The good news is that CodeREV Kids has a few ideas on how you can do that.

Be inspiring, be supportive – but set clear expectations

A good parent knows that praise is important to their child’s success, but don’t let your child assume that the praise you give them means you don’t know they could do better. For example, if your child goes from mostly Cs to mostly Bs, you want to reward their hard work – but you also want to be clear that you know they’re capable of As.

The easiest way to make this change is to tell your children that you believe in their abilities, but make your praise not about their grades but about their potential. Remember that you’re really trying to foster a love of learning. If they get too hung up on earning As then they could end up being discouraged.

Pay attention to what works for your child

Making even the smallest changes in your child’s study habits can help accommodate their personal preferences – and can make a huge difference. For example, what if you’ve always said that your child must complete their homework before playing video games? This may lead to them rushing through their homework just so they can get to their games. Another option is to let them play their video games for a set amount of time first. Letting your child begin with what they want to be doing could help them focus more when it comes time to get the work done.

Remember that your child has more going on than just school

It’s easy as a parent to focus on your child’s grades and how they’re doing in school. However, at CodeREV Kids we encourage you to think beyond school and remember that your child has other interests that should be explored. While you may think of extracurricular activities as competing with school, the truth is that they can supplement it. For example, our spring classes give kids hands-on experience with coding – which can help boost problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and more.

 

Skills

The Importance of Teaching Your Child to Take Risks

As a parent, you want to protect your child from as much as you possibly can. As a result, you may hesitate to allow them to take risks, or try to soften the blow if a risk they take doesn’t turn out in their favor. At CodeREV Kids, we actually think it’s important to let your kids take risks. Why? Read on to learn.

Teach kids to take risks while you’re still here to protect them

If you try to shield your child from ever having to take a risk, you’re taking a pretty big risk yourself – the risk that once they’re out of the house they’ll take those risks and you won’t be there to help them.

For example, let’s say your child wants to try out for a competitive singing group. You may worry that they don’t have the experience to go head to head with other students in their grade and you may not think their voice is quite as good as it needs to be. You don’t have to tell your child this – let them learn on their own. Will they be disappointed that they don’t make the singing group? Sure, but they’ll also learn that rejection isn’t as bad as they may have feared.

Have some control over the risks they take

In addition to the risk that your child will grow up afraid to take a risk, you also have the risk that your child will grow up and take severe risks because they’ve never learned the difference between a minor and major risk. For this reason, it makes sense to let your child take a risk today when you have some control over it.

A risk can be as simple as trying something new

Don’t think of a risk as something that could harm your child – just think of it as trying something new. For example, we offer a range of tech camps for kids of all ages. If your child has never taken part in something like this, then they may be afraid. They may be afraid to risk failing.

Teach them that it’s okay to fail. The important thing is to try it in the first place. Our tech camps are a great way to teach your kids problem solving skills, to help them make friends, and to build a strong technology background that can serve them for the rest of their lives.

Education

5 Ways to Increase the Chances That Your Child Will Choose to Go to College

In this day and age, it’s more important than ever that kids go to college, yet too often they make the choice not to. Whether it’s because they’re afraid of the cost, they don’t think they need it for the career they want to go into, or they’re just sick of schools, it can be difficult for parents to see their child decide to pass on what could be such a useful opportunity.

At CodeREV Kids, we think it’s important to remember that the college prep doesn’t start when your child is a senior in high school – it starts much earlier. Here are a few things you can do to help steer your child toward the rewarding track of college.

1. Let your children know you value college

If you went to college, talk about it fondly. If you didn’t, talk about how it could have opened doors for you.

2. Ask your child what they want to be when they’re older

Of course, you’re not looking for your seven-year-old child to pick a career they’re going to stick with, but you can show them that you’ll support their goals. Encourage whatever their dreams are and put your child in touch with anyone you know in the field. Then connect that job to the need for a college degree.

3. Start your child off with challenging coursework

Studies show that if a high school student takes a single college-level course, their chances of going to and completing college go up.

4. Show them learning can be fun

The biggest obstacle you have is not letting your child think that learning is boring, too hard, or something that’s not necessary. At CodeREV Kids, we offer technology classes that are fun, useful, and will foster a love of learning in your kid.

5. Visit colleges when you’re traveling

The next time you go on a family trip, take a few hours to tour the local university or college. Talk to your child about the programs available at that school and whether or not it would offer the type of programs they need.

These are just a few ideas to help improve the chances that your child goes to college. All parents want their children to succeed and college can make that more likely in a wide range of fields. Reach out to the instructors at CodeREV Kids if you need more ideas on incorporating tech into your child’s learning program.

Skills

4 Ways to Nurture a Growth Mindset in Your Children

There’s been a lot of press recently about supporting a child’s growth mindset. But what does this mean? In short, the growth mindset is one in which failure doesn’t define you, but is rather an opportunity to learn something new. For kids with a growth mindset, effort is the reward, whether they fail or succeed. Here are four ways you can help encourage this attitude in your child.

1. Be the change you want to see

First and foremost, model the growth mindset yourself. For example, talk to your kids every day about what you learned, what mistakes you made, and what you learned from those mistakes. Then talk to them about everything you put effort into, whether you completed it or not. Before long, your kids will be joining in with their own answers and will unknowingly be using a growth mindset themselves.

2. Praise your child’s effort – not their ability

You should praise your child but if you praise them for being talented or intelligent, then you’re putting them into a fixed mindset in which those factors can be changed, whether they make good or bad choices. Instead, focus on how much effort they’ve put into things, and complement the strategies they use.

3. Work with your children to reframe their thinking

A person who’s truly adopted a growth mindset never asks, “Is it possible to do this?” they ask “How can I do this?” Encourage your kids to work on processes that test their abilities. Some of the coding classes at CodeREV Kids are especially good for helping kids learn how to think critically and solve problems.

4. Don’t sugar coat failure

If your child fails, praise their effort and move on to helping them find ways they can improve the next time they’re in that situation. If you don’t acknowledge the failure at all, then you’re going to take a mistake and turn it into a way of life.

Most people have mixed feelings about following a growth mindset and in encouraging their children to do so. The bottom line is that of course it’s up to you how you encourage your child. At CodeREV Kids, we just think it’s smart to learn from mistakes and find other ways to move forward. To learn more about the many classes we offer for kids, reach out to us or stop by one of our classrooms today!

Education

Does Memorization Help Kids in the Long Run?

At CodeREV Kids, we believe that the best way for kids to really learn STEM skills is to get involved. We offer a wide range of hands-on coding classes that can help your kid to learn to code from a young age. That said, there are some fields where memorization still has a place.

Memorization can help improve a child’s language skills

When you think about memorization, do you think about kids simply memorizing important facts and then forgetting them as soon as they’re done remembering those facts for a test? That may not be useful memorization, but remember that there are other types. For example, you likely know the lyrics to more than one song by heart. That’s memorization!

Whether kids memorize poems, lyrics, passages from books, or something else entirely, they’ll become more familiar with the rhythm, vocabulary, and cadences in the English language. This is why kids are so fascinated by Dr. Seuss’s books – they are written with lovely tempos and upbeat sounds.

Do your kids need to build organization skills? Memorization may help

When a child memorizes something, they are doing several things they’re not even aware of – including breaking down a big task into smaller tasks that are much easier to complete. For example, consider when you memorize a song without meaning to. You don’t memorize it in its entirety the first time you hear it.

What’s more likely is that you hear it a few times, memorize the chorus, and as you hear it more and more, you start to fill in the rest of the song. This is all done without you even knowing it! Your brain is organizing the song into parts and automatically knows that the best bet is to memorize the part that’s heard over and over again – the chorus.

Memorization works with other skills

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years at CodeREV Kids, it’s that when kids learn one skill, it helps them with others. As they learn how to memorize, they’re also learning visualization skills, they’re learning how to rhyme, they’re building association skills, they’re learning about repetition, and they’re using reviewing skills.

Each of these skills will help them in the future as they learn other subjects, whether language or math related. Kids don’t have to start off memorizing an entire book. Just start with a fun quote and move on from there.

Education

A Blast from the Past: Learn Why Dictation is Making a Comeback

Whether you refer to it as a game or as a learning activity, dictation may be old school but it’s still a great way to find out how your child is doing with their language art skills. It’s very simple: Just read out a sentence or two and have your kid write it down, word for word. They may choose to physically write it out or they can use a keyboard. What you’re looking for is skill-level in language so the medium doesn’t matter. In addition to showing you where their skill level is, dictation can help kids in a number of ways.

Dictation can help increase your child’s listening skills

If your child has trouble listening, try this: Read a sentence while they sit and listen. Read it again and have them write it down while you’re speaking. Then read it a third time while they check their work. Once they’re done, move on to the next one. This teaches them to listen without even realizing what they’re doing.

Find out what common mistakes they’re making

If you’re relying solely on what you hear when your children talk, then you’re not up to date on their language skills. For example, do they know the difference between their, they’re, and there? Do they know when to use it’s and when to use its? What about two, too, to, or you’re and your? These can be confusing but if you don’t see them write them down, you’ll never know if they’re really perfected them.

Teach them to focus five minutes at a time

A common complaint of parents is that their kids have trouble concentrating. At CodeREV Kids, we recommend your child comes to us and learns how to code. They’ll figure out how to focus very quickly and will love doing it!

Another option is to teach dictation five minutes a day. They may not have the focus to do it for twenty minutes at a time, but if you tell your kid you’re going to dictate five sentences, they can likely focus. As time goes on and they learn to look forward to this challenging activity, add a few sentences to the game. Just make sure they’re still having fun and be sure to check their work every time.