Bottom line: Coding, the Musical is a brand new app from TechSpaghetti that is designed to teach elementary aged kids the fundamentals of coding. Help your child lay the groundwork for more advanced coding and programming, all while having fun creating a musical. This app is free to download and try.
If you’d like to download Coding, the Musical, please use the handy link provided. The app is free to try, and additional worlds/stories are available with a subscription service ($7.99/one month, $34.99/six months, $58.99/twelve months)
Reviewer’s note: I was testing this app using a Testflight version of the app. All options of World 1 were open to me as if I had a full subscription. I’m not sure if all of the five worlds are already open with the subscription version, but if they aren’t yet they will be coming with future updates. Often I find that occasional blips that I run into in the Testflight versions of apps are corrected before release to the app store.
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No ads, but there are in-app purchases for subscription service
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First off I have to admit something. I am a sucker for musicals of all kinds. So when I found out that I was getting to test an app that builds a musical, well I was pretty stoked. Coding, the Musical is an app that is designed to introduce elementary aged kids the basic concepts of coding. This reviewer found that, even though the app was written for elementary aged kids, even adults could learn some of the essentials from this charming app.
This app is presented in chapters (or perhaps they are acts, since this is a musical) with each chapter introducing, or building onto, a new concept. In World One, we are introduced to arrays, for loops, directional functions, and Booleans.
First we help our young heroine (whose name I seem to have missed) design and update her house by giving kids options to choose from and putting them into an array. We get to help her build her garden in the same way. As we move through the story, we get to direct where it will go by choosing things from presented options and putting them in order in an array to tell the app what to do.
As we move forward in World One, we also get to work with directional functions that tell the app where to move in the story by, quite literally, pointing the way. We also get to use Booleans to determine the relationship between options or actions.
In the later worlds, the ideas being addressed will become more complex, taking users from simpler concepts like variables all the way through more complex things like databases. In the full app there are over 50 stories with 150 songs and 100 games. Each of these stories will be unique, driven by the user’s choices.
What I liked:
- What a fun way to introduce coding to young kids! It is the foundation for much of our learning today.
- There are almost endless options for building the story. I liked that the choices that you make follow you through the story.
- Hello? MUSICAL!!
What I liked less:
- I found some of the motions in the app to be a little stilted.
- I do think that there should be an option to skip through the song in each section if a child chose to. I mean, y’all know I wouldn’t, but I can see that upon repeated playthrough of the app a child might want to speed it up a bit and get to the story building.
Overall, I found this app to be a delightful introduction to coding for elementary aged children. By presenting the concepts in bright and appealing ways and wrapping them up in a story that kids can become invested in creating, the developer is ensuring that kids will remain engaged in the learning process. Four stars.
***
Kelli really feels like she missed her calling by not becoming a Broadway performer. But the rest of the world is missing nothing. Seriously. Smart Apps for Kids was paid a fee to review this app.
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