by Bash Sarmiento | Bash Sarmiento is a writer and an educator from Manila. He writes laconic pieces in the education, lifestyle and health realms. His academic background and extensive experience in teaching, textbook evaluation, business management and traveling are translated in his works.
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With the internet being a part of everyone’s lives today, it’s no wonder that even kids are largely exposed to a variety of its content. Aside from simply playing games or watching videos, children are becoming increasingly interested in website design and development.
A perfect mixture of logic and creativity, creating a website gives children something that piques their interests and stimulates them to explore more. This creates a productive and fun bonding activity as parents try to engage with their children on new and exciting ways. If you’re looking to try this with your kids, here are a few tips to make the experience memorable.
1. Find a topic they love
As adults, you’re probably aware that there’s basically a website for everything you can think of – and those you never thought possible. This means that when looking for a website concept for your children, remember that anything under the sun is possible. Children are notorious for coming up with extremely creative ideas. By supporting them, your simple bonding activity can spur them onto a beneficial path. You will quickly find that website creation might be just the sort of “big” thing your kid is looking for.
From dinosaurs to fantasy lands, from sports to cartoons, every topic can be applied to a website. You can pitch some ideas or you can let their imagination run wild. Website topic searching will be a fruitful exercise for both of you.
2. Choose a language
Like our spoken and written language, the programming language and approach that your children will use, is a great factor especially if it is their first time. Although there are object-based tools for designing websites, you can start them young with text-based programming languages. In fact, kids may use python for web development if either the child or the parent is so inclined. It is beginner-friendly in general. Its syntax and semantics are close enough to the natural language, which makes it fairly easy for children and parents to grasp.
Also, your choice of language will help narrow down the activities you will do next. For beginners, however, the different programming languages offer roughly the same basic capabilities. This means that regardless of your choice, you can still have a lot of activities to enjoy with your kid.
3. Create your website
As the parent or guardian, you can create the basic structure to get the website running. Better yet, you can teach them how to do it. Then, they can start adding certain details that they prefer, to their very own website.
While it website design is fun, there are also hard intricacies involved in developing a website which can be frustrating at times. Whenever you start seeing your young programmer frowning or scratching heads, don’t forget to use positive reinforcement to motivate your kid. Remember, a child that is driven will definitely produce better results – and it all starts with a small nudge in the right direction.
You can give them tips every now and then but it is more important to give them enough time to experiment on their own. Although the anxiety that parents feel when their kids are having difficulty is real, it’s also a learning moment for them to learn and trust their children. When the kid pulls through, this gives greater satisfaction for both the parent and the child.
4. Save your work
Like every starting professional in the digital field, saving your work is essential. You can keep the source codes or the offline webpage on your or your kid’s computer. You can also upload it on any of the free website hosting platforms. By going with the latter, you can show them the next step by making their work appear on an actual, online website. Although it sounds too much, this extra step can show your children how the steps you’ve bonded over actually work in the real world.
Give your child’s web design a workspace on the internet. This will help them realize their work is live on the internet and can be shared with other people. This will allow them to communicate with other children who may also recognize the value of their work.
What might be a parent-child bonding moment today could become a full-blown career in the future. Kids do grow fast and the next thing you know, your kid has grown and made a magnificent website for a business – all in a day’s work.
The Takeaway
Enjoying website design and development doesn’t always have to be rooted in setting kids off to this career path. It can be as simple as drawing or creating clay figures together. However, the skills and values that they develop through this seemingly easy and fun activity could be the very same traits that will help them adjust better and perform better in the following stages of their lives. If you’re looking for a fun activity to bond over with your kids, why not try something that has potentially far-reaching implications for them.
