An “Hour Of Code” With My Bored 5-Year Old At Home

“Mommy!! I am bored!”

“Mommy!! can I watch some more videos?”

“No, this is mine!! I don’t want you to play with my car!!”

I have a 2-year old and a 5-year old who had been home since March when their day-care was temporarily closed as a precautionary measure. And since then, these were the words repeated constantly in high pitch voices in our house. The rule of “no more than 1 hour screen time each day” has turned into “lower the volume when you watch videos”.

Last night, my 5-year old was watching “Paw Patrol” from his tablet. I was typing away in Visual Studio Code next to him. He looked up and said to me, “Mommy, what are you writing?” “Writing code” I answered. I was just about to dive right back into work when I remembered…

When Charlie (my 5-year old) was about 3 years old, the day-care teacher asked all the kids in the class “what do you want to be when you grow up”. Some kids answered “I want to be a dinosaur” “I want to be a teacher”. Charlie without hesitation answered “I want to be a software engineer and draw diapers on the computer”. The “diaper” part might sound strange but it was because he had seen me reviewing a 3D model of a diaper in the virtual simulation software my team developed (from a customer in the consumer product industry). It was almost impossible to explain to a 3-year old that I don’t create diapers on the computer but instead I create software that can be used to create diapers on the…