How to inspire a 1 year old to code
How I am using snappable electronic mods to encourage my son to embrace technology
Almost one year ago today, the Coalition for Queens team, aka C4Q, was preparing for a hackathon. My Access Code teammates and I had built a sleek password management app called delockr and we were resolving our last few bugs before shipping our code.
On the night before the hackathon, I dreamt in code. It was 5am, the day of the hackathon, and I woke to a nudge. Then a second nudge. I heard my wife say, “Andrew, it’s time.” I quickly realized that my wife’s water had broken 4 weeks prior to her delivery date. I was in store for much more than a hackathon that day. We had a great birth (and hackathon) and I’ll never forget that July 13th.
Fast forward a year. I’m now a dedicated dad working in tech. The last time I dropped by C4Q, co-founder Dave Yang, suggested that I check out littleBits, after I mentioned that I was investigating early childhood coding courses for my son. (Yes, I start early.) After checking out the website and picking up a few kits, I am hooked.
littleBits are electronic legos and they’re amazing.
The team has developed a growing system of electronic modules that snap together with magnets and allow anyone (yes, even kids) to become creators. Tinkerers of all ages can use the snappable power sources and sensors to create personal alarms, speech puppets, or even keytars. The cool thing is that they are constantly launching new kits and these projects are adaptable based on their growing library of mods.
I wanted to see if littleBits could be a platform for inspiring my son in the years to come. A year after Access Code (and birth of my son), I was working on a different kind of hack. This time, it would be a littleBits-powered Mickey Mouse cake topper.
Without littleBits, my imagination might have stopped with a cardboard Mickey Mouse cut-out. But no! With the help of the Synth and Arduino kits, I was able to do much more.
The littleBits Projects page really makes it simple for newbies.
After finding the “Play a Melody” project on littleBits’ Community page, I learned to play the Jeopardy song and used this as a rubric to record and then play ‘Happy Birthday.’
I created a styrofoam Mickey Mouse cake topper perched on top of a red solo cup and I worked with littleBits’ Premium Kit and Synth Korg mods (including keyboard) to record my version of the ‘Happy Birthday’ song on Soundcloud. (Thank you, thank you, you’re far too kind.). But after discovering a great rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ on the Arduino Forum, I chose to go with that version. (You can learn to code your own melodies on the Arduino Help page). I uploaded it, tucked the battery and mods under the cup — and Mickey was playing.
My son loved it! The project was fun and I hope to inspire him to both play and learn using littleBits in the future. You can take a closer look at the littleBits Birthday Song on the Projects Page.
