Let’s Start Coding: A Timberdoodle Review

This is a sponsored post. I received this item from Timberdoodle in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts and these words and these opinions are, as always on this page and in real and regular life, all completely and totally my own. 

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Every homeschooling family I’ve ever met has a “speciality”, if you know what I mean.

While some magical folks excel in ALL THE THINGS (and therefore cannot be my close friends – kidding, kidding) most of us have a certain knack for one subject more than another. Or love for one field over another. Maybe it’s all about the music in your house. Violins and cellos and guitars and banjos. Maybe it’s about nature – you’re studying the trees every day and your house is filled with shelves of sticks and geodes and quotes by John Muir. Maybe it’s all about the books for you. (This one is my own personal favorite.) We read a lot and quotes are on the walls and I named my kids after literary characters, for goodness sake.

If you have special subjects that are kind of like your babies, then it might be that you have subjects that are kind of like …. not your babies.

For me – that has always been the math and technical side of science. While those matters are not without their own fascination, they have been more of a challenge for me to teach. I have sought out other teachers for my students in these topics always.

I definitely find them valuable and a couple of my kids have shown real interest and a propensity for those subjects.

Beyond outside classes and tutors for most math and science classes, I also love to put projects and ideas in their hands. Ones that involve me Not A Bit.

We’ve tried Timberdoodle’s science books and their lab kit in the past.

This time it’s a kit called Let’s Start Coding.

While this is part of a curriculum unit, you can always purchase any of the Timberdoodle items separately and individually. Because I’m partial to my Charlotte Mason ways, I love purchasing the items that I specifically want.

This learning coding kit I delivered to my sons (who were the most interested) in a “Here, figure this out” sort of manner.

I’m professional like that.

And of course, figure it out they did.

They had it connected to the computer and working and doing its thing in no time.

I know there is more to this kit, more projects and gradeable style learning, but on this one, in this particular season of our educational lives, I offered this as an add-on, a learning for fun sort of experience. This suited my boys just fine.

They had to assemble a little board and connect it to the computer and there were instructions and basically, I had nothing to do with any of it and that was preferable for all of us! (The instructions were in the form of online videos, as well as some written guidelines and project cards.)

This kit actually offers quite a lot. The Timberdoodle curriculum kit that it is included with is for fifth grade. I think for a 5th grader you may have to guide a little more than I did but it is pretty self-directed. My senior in high school chose to be right in there with my 8th grader because both boys found it fascinating.

The entire system connects to your computer. It did connect with our quite outdated Mac desktop but it was far more successful and easier to use with our newer laptop.

The coding they learn will make lights work for instant feedback. There are a LOT of projects – I think it offers 50. My boys did not last through 50 independently, but if it was assigned in a more routine way, that would still be really beneficial and offer a lot of opportunity in one kit.

You can order your own Let’s Start Coding Kit right here.

And if you’d rather go big and order the entire 5th grade curriculum – you can do that here. (It’s actually on sale right now!)

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