Recommended Coding classes for youngins! My 7-yr-old daughter has enjoyed both of the 3-session courses that she has taken with codeSpark teachers. She enjoys building her own games and stories and sharing with her peers. We look forward to more sessions!

Perfect for what we were looking for. H (age 8) has been jealous of his brother’s (K 13) online coding classes (another site). They didn’t have anything that we felt was appropriate for H’s level. We wanted something introductory with a lot of guidance. As a child of pandemic learning, H hasn’t had a lot of experience navigating in groups. We gave the Game Maker (series 1) a try and it was a hit. They were focused not only on coding (concepts) but instructional support/guidance. His teacher Nicole is great at keeping the kids on track and inspiring them to come up with ideas. I LOVE their “brain dump” model. It is a useful skill that can be applied to other aspects of life. IF I had to find a flaw, I would say that I wish that range of the students (maturity and knowledge) were closer. There were definitely students who were more advanced than H and some that were behind him. But it’s not a huge deal and a good opportunity to develop important social skills. We are on our second series of the Game Maker classes and have already harassed the staff about coming up with a third series ;) TLDR; perfect fit for what our 8 year old needed. This class may not be heavy on coding language, but it teaches coding concepts which is just as useful, especially for the younger minds/beginners. Lots of support for those who need it in group learning. Would highly recommend for similar students.

Good exposure to coding for kids My son had a great time over winter break completing a 4 day Coding a Game program. He learned different computer science terms and was able to create a game on the CodeSpark platform by the end of the week. It's a good experience.

NOT SO GOOD The gameplay, and coding activities are fun but... *You can not demo or model this game as a teacher if you signed in through Clever (they won't even give me another account to sign in so I can play it even though I have paid for a subscription already.) It is hard for kids to scroll down to basic levels as there is no scroll bar, so if you are using laptops, PCs, or Chromebooks, it is very hard for little kids to do it. It often kicks kids out after they finish level 8, afterwhich, they need to go back to the homepage, scroll down to the level they were on, click on it so that level 9 shows up. “Game stuff" should be at the bottom and the coding levels should be at the top. Some of the answers they provide on their guide (Kite Plight) are WRONG. There should be an arrow so students can easily switch screens between levels 1-8 then to 9-16 (or 17) There are often problems going back to a page and there is an error. You have to reopen it, log out, then open it again to log back in, very frustrating. After contacting them, they don't seem to be too interested in fixing anything.

This class taught my children so much… This class taught my children so much about the game and was a kid-appropriate introduction to coding. My kids loved it. Their teacher was terrific, and it was a small group which made it easy for the teacher to be attentive and give each kid attention for troubleshooting. I will be doing another one!!