Mom Meenal has a degree in computer science and is the business intelligence director of a large company. She is proud to call herself a \u201ctechnology freak,\u201d and says she has been interested not just in new devices and technologies but also in programming ever since she was 12 years old. \u201cI wanted to inculcate that interest and curiosity in my kids as well,\u201d she adds. \u201cI have always wanted them to learn programming because it enables the mind to think logically and analytically. [They] can process structured and more complex ideas and become better thinkers.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The boys study at the Challenger School campus in Newark, CA and they did have some exposure to programming at school. \u201cWe basically learnt a little bit of typing and Logo,\u201d says Karthik. \u201cI am a really good typist now!\u201d says his twin Aditya, but clearly that was not enough.<\/p>\n Meenal wanted the boys to develop their programming skills beyond what was being taught at their school. She enrolled the twins in an iDTech camp one summer. They enjoyed the week, but she was not sure there was retained learning in that experience. When Meenal signed on to Codecademy to improve her own coding knowledge, the kids were curious enough that she signed them on to Ruby and then Python lessons<\/a>, and they also tried their hand at Javascript. \u201cWhen I started running, the boys took up running too,\u201d says Meenal with a laugh. \u201cWhen I go out biking, they love to bike long distances with me.\u201d So it was no surprise that Karthik and Aditya wanted to code like mom, their biggest role model.<\/p>\n The syntax of the traditional programming languages was a bit overwhelming for the fourth graders and they quickly lost interest in the coding tutorials.<\/span><\/p>\n Meenal realized that, despite the twins\u2019 obvious interest in programming, these courses were not helping in retaining that interest, or inspiring them to continue working on knowledge building. When she came across Tynker, the bright, attractive interface and story-line based tutorials seemed engaging and very interesting, and she signed the twins up for the home edition.<\/p>\n The boys were immediately hooked. Says Karthik, \u201cI really liked that Tynker had a story. Ruby and Python didn\u2019t so maybe that\u2019s why I found them boring.\u201d He likes challenges and says \u201cTynker was easy to begin with, but soon it got a bit harder, and I had to really think to solve some of the puzzles and coding problems.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think I understand coding better with Tynker,\u201d says Aditya. \u201cI learnt new commands that I didn\u2019t know earlier, and that was cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Twins](\"https:\/\/images.tynker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Iyers-1-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a>But the clincher for both boys? They actually\u00a0enjoy<\/strong>\u00a0programming with Tynker. Meenal believes it is the ability to be creative and build interesting things that makes Tynker engaging and almost addictive. In the boys’ case, the current obsession is game-building.<\/p>\n