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Ask HN: Technology/creative books and games for my daughter (7 years)

149 points| rrr83 | 2 years ago

As my daughter is on her school vacation would like to get some good reference of books, creative games I can introduce to her. I am more keen to get her know about art/programming/drawing/music/science

Any links where I can buy/download will be much appreciated, thanks in advance!

97 comments

order

spiffytech|2 years ago

There's an old game from the 90s I loved : The Incredible Machine.

It's all about devising elaborate Rube Goldberg machines to solve puzzles. The cat knocks a ball into the goldfish bowl, which tips over and fills a bucket that operates a pulley that flips a switch that opens a door. That kind of thing.

I remember it being very freeform and exploratory, teaching cause and effect and physics and thinking through complex interaction chains.

I was probably around 7 when I played it. Very age appropriate.

It's available on a web-based DOS emulator!

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-incredible-machine-1m...

Probably downloadable somewhere too.

vallanceroad|2 years ago

> The Incredible Machine.

Oh wow. I forgot about this game for a long time, until just now.

Our elementary school didn't have enough buses to take everyone home at once. The bus departures were staggered so a few buses would take some kids home and return for the next groups.

You definitely wanted to be in that last group of kids to leave, which meant you got to sit in your classroom and play one of the three games we had on our two Macintosh SE machines: Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and The Incredible Machine. Hours and hours spent waiting on the bus playing this wonderful game, usually with your friends sitting next to you quietly yelling suggestions at you. Thanks for the reminder!

s5300|2 years ago

Hmm… speaking of the 90’s, though it’s on the tail end of it:

Mia Mouse/Mia’s Big Adventure Collection was something I recall playing as a kid.

I definitely think I was much younger than 7 though, I’d been playing RuneScape for close to 3 years by the time I was 7. Mia’s is probably still appropriate & engaging enough for that age though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia%27s_Big_Adventure_Collec...

I think I’m specifically remembering Mia Math, but it looks like there’s Math/Science/Reading/Language, seems to be marketed for education.

schwartzworld|2 years ago

The Incredible Machine was amazing, as was the spiritual sequel "The Incredible Toon Machine"

necmttn|2 years ago

Sir i have been looking for this game for over a decade now, Thank you!

throw_away1525|2 years ago

I can highly recommend Amazing Tales, it is a pen and paper RPG for kids her age. I play with my daughter and she LOVES it. You only need a couple of six sided dice, although you can optionally spice things up with 8, 10, and 12 sided die if you have them (or you can make it special and buy some from your local games shop).

It's basically collaborative storytelling, and the possibility of failing dice rolls makes it exciting (you always 'fail forward', failures never really hurt the player but just open up new opportunities). The book also has tons of tips that you would probably never think of on your own - for instance, don't let your child name their character after themselves. Having a separate name allows them to keep some emotional distance between themselves and their character, which makes scary situations less scary for them!

https://amazing-tales.net/introducing-amazing-tales/

The PDF is 6 bucks, I felt like I had gotten my moneys worth after our very first session.

ca_tech|2 years ago

Hero Kids is another well regarded kid friendly rpg. Also only relies on 6 sided die and each session is an hour tops. Has been a fun way to spend a rainy day for our kids and they get pretty creative, so much so that the "story" sometimes continues throughout the day as they talk about their heros. Also cheap, especially if you purchase the bundle. https://www.heroforgegames.com/hero-kids/

leandot|2 years ago

Thanks for this, had an amazing evening killing dragons and flying on magic carpets with my daughters.

stigi|2 years ago

This sound so cool!

Does anybody know of similar games for non English speaking folks? My kid only speaks German and I have the feeling playing our first RPG will benefit from us all being on the same page in the same language.

Thanks!

RheingoldRiver|2 years ago

Something I liked to do around that age was make "newspapers" for my parents - no need to buy or download anything (except paper and staples, I guess). Fold some paper in half a couple times, cut it, staple it together, until you have a booklet that's vaguely small-newspaper-shaped. Give it to her and let her imagination run wild writing whatever she feels like, reporting on recent activities at school, at home, could be the events of books she just read, whatever she knows about in your local community or even the country/world. If she wants to, let her do some research on the internet too, although that's not something I ever did (I don't think we had the internet yet even?). It's a creative writing project, a design project, potentially a research/analytical project. My own "newspapers" were always titled "Today's News" and while I always did them purely for fun, looking back I think they gave me a basic sense of graphic design/layout, helped my handwriting, improved creativity, were an early idea of how to design headlines/titles of articles that are clear to the reader, and other basic writing skills.

Obvious points based on my experience when I made these:

- This is for fun, don't like, grade her on it or anything

- Whatever she learns from it will be very tangential to the fun, but she probably will learn things from it

- If she wants to write made-up stories about imaginary friends and such, that's fine, it's a kind of make-believe play. I did that sort of thing too, it didn't mean I didn't know fact from fiction in the actual newspaper

- You absolutely must read every single edition. Multiple times.

anhner|2 years ago

> - You absolutely must read every single edition. Multiple times.

And, for the love of all that is holy, please do not throw them away in a couple of years thinking it's junk! Saying this as a kid who used to write books/newspapers and then got most of them thrown away...

Waterluvian|2 years ago

Minecraft. My kids, a bit younger than 7, are ridiculously creative with it. They’re always making redstone music machines and piston machines.

The best thing about Minecraft is that it naturally scales to their skill. They began just learning the controls and exploring. Then made simple houses. Etc…

The older one is so hooked he builds his own mechanical pressure plates and pistons with Lego.

bombcar|2 years ago

Do try to use Java Minecraft if you can, because modded technical Minecraft will last forever. Once you’ve “beat” the base game move on to things like GregTech and it’ll never end.

blowski|2 years ago

My son is 9 so I’ve looked around for similar activities in the computer space. I also run a code club for 9-11 year olds.

Turing Tumble teaches you to build a binary calculator using marbles and bits of plastic. At her age, it will require you to be pretty hands on, but it’s away from the computer.

Board games with lots of rules can be good for understanding complex systems. Catan and Spacebase, for example.

Playgrounds on Apple devices is great. Full on coding but in an interesting way. Raspberry Pi foundation has a number of projects for Scratch and Python. There’s a book about coding for kids where you hack away at a Python computer game.

Steam has some games for teaching coding. Human Resource Machine is great.

ChatGPT and Dall-E also get lots of smiles. Interact with the API to build a chatbot.

rebelshrug|2 years ago

Snap Circuits are great: https://www.elenco.com/snapcircuits/

Also a big fan of Legos (and so are my kids).

Highlights magazine is great for that age and can fill up some time.

Step-by-step drawing books can also be fun, and can usually be found at libraries: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/reviews/drawing-book-for-k...

Can also take her stargazing and teach her about constellations. There are mobile apps to help you find them, but books and searching for them yourselves is also fun.

theshrike79|2 years ago

The Hello Ruby books are _amazing_. They won actual design awards: http://www.helloruby.com

The girl in the books is just named Ruby, the books really don't have a connection to Ruby the Programming Language.

rodrigodlu|2 years ago

I can definitely relate to this. I bought this for my daughter 2 years ago, she was 5.

It's more a introduction to what can be seen in any kids related programming apps, like Scratch, and it's a paper book, so it's less abstract than a screen on her tablet.

zakokor|2 years ago

This is great!

everythingabili|2 years ago

I teach creative coding and maintain a site that has a list of creative tools (graphics, music, coding, writing, game-making) that are mainly free, and web-based. You can filter them by "easiness".

https://digitalcreativitytools.everythingability.com/

I made the site for university students, but I have tested/vetted all of the tools myself, often with my child who is now just 11. There are some activities you could do with her too. The Inspiration section might throw up some useful stuff for you both.

With regards to game-making, Scratch is a great starting point, but recently we have been really enjoying working with gDevelop - a free, no-code game engine. The videos on YouTube are great to get you both started. Twine (Chapbook) has been a fun tool for creating interactive adventure games, and this Zine-maker is ace https://alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zine-maker

throwaway71271|2 years ago

Not sure if 7 is old enough, I made this card "game" with my daughter when she was 10: https://punkx.org/4917/ which is not really a game but more like a puzzle, you have 54 small programs for a 4 bit made up computer (Richard Buckland's computer) and you have to interpret them in your head or with pen and paper. It's quite interesting to play with her when I change few instructions on a card. (you can also print it yourself on a4 paper)

Other interesting game are of course robot turtles (http://www.robotturtles.com/), but she might be too old for it.

And you might like Mark Rober's https://www.crunchlabs.com/

There is human resource machine that my daughter played when she was 8 or so (https://tomorrowcorporation.com/humanresourcemachine) which is a brilliant game.

Also all kinds of "crypto" books, from caesar's cipher to morse code books were very interesting

ZeroGravitas|2 years ago

How to Make Monstrous, Huge, Unbelievably Big Bubbles Book by David Stein

> How to blow soap bubbles 20-feet long and more, by architect David Stein, inventor of the Bubble Thing (which comes attached to the book)

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/558727

groffee|2 years ago

Well I'm not 7, but I'm definitely interested in that!

carbonguy|2 years ago

Perhaps a bit late to the thread here, but I have to put in my $0.02 for "The Way Things Work" (and its sequels):

https://www.alibris.com/Way-Things-Work-David-Macaulay/book/...

For the unfamiliar - the book is an illustrated guide to how different kinds of mechanisms and designed systems work starting from simple machines, levers, wheel and axle, etc. through to nuclear fission and moving on through computers in the sequels.

David Macaulay's writing and illustrations are top-notch. Honestly, all of his books are great, but this is the one that I actually owned when I was younger so I read it all the time - hard to put into words the impact it had on me at around that same age.

bytehowl|2 years ago

These books actually have an interactive software couterpart which came out in the 90s. It might be hard to get a hold of it legally and to run it nowadays, though.

mingusrude|2 years ago

If you intend to play something with her, I can recommend the board game Carcassone. Even if it's not children's game, it's perfectly playable for a 7-year old with some adjustments to the scoring (skip field-scoring). No reading or calculation apart from simple addition is needed.

bombcar|2 years ago

Carcassone is great and there are a ton of games that are fun in that vein; check out boardgamegeek.

Whatever you do do NOT buy all the expansions at once! Only one at a time over time.

There are games like Agricola that even when you lose you feel you built something, which can be nice for overcompetitive types.

matthew16550|2 years ago

You both might enjoy an old TV series called Curiosity Show.

It's aimed at children around your daughters age (might be a few years too young, I'm not sure). It covers lots of fun science, craft, music topics and has many small activities that can be made at home.

There is a lot on YT: https://m.youtube.com/user/CuriosityShow

Some of the segments are a bit out of date now but most are still totally relevant today.

riffraff|2 years ago

have you considered making up your own tabletop RPG?

Kids love "make believe", being heroes, and playing with their parents: just make up your own story, give them some hit points and dice, then invent some checks as you go on.

It's good for their creativity, and you can sprinkle science-y concepts here and there (levers, archimede's principle, solving small puzzles).

I've been doing it with my kids, and they seem to have enjoyed it a lot, and I did more than them, I think :)

prawn|2 years ago

We've found that watercolour pencils are great in helping them with detailed art that might be beyond some children straight painting at that age.

Not books or games, and not sure where your child is at with her drawing, but my kids (similar age) have enjoyed following along with this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@artforkidshub

Creative games that we have and like:

  https://www.thinkfun.com/products/gravity-maze/
  https://www.thinkfun.com/products/sweet-logic/
  https://www.thinkfun.com/products/rush-hour/
Clip Circuit: https://www.amazon.com.au/Advanced-Lab-Electronic-Clip-Circu...

We have a lot of GraviTrax also: https://www.ravensburger.us/discover/gravitrax/gravitrax-sta...

thetoon|2 years ago

For what it's worth, we had much better response from our kids with Gravitrax the Game (https://www.ravensburger.co.uk/en-GB/products/gravitrax/expe...) than the regular one. The material is basically the same (and thus could also work at extending a starter set), but there are cards with puzzle included, difficulty ramps up nicely, and the kids got more involved than with the "freeform" approach.

Turing Tumble has also been a big hit at our place, but it's clearly more for older kids (https://upperstory.com/turingtumble/)

UpperStory also has a new game (Spintronics) which looks awesome, but I haven't had the opportunity to test it.

open-source-ux|2 years ago

Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is excellent for kids (and adults). There are tutorials for any topic (https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en). A lot of people are not aware that the Raspberry Pi magazines (MagPi) and books are free as PDFs. Or you can purchase printed books or magazines.

- Magazines: https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/issues

- Books: https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/books

Micro:bit

The micro:bit is an even smaller pocket computer for kids. The BBC was a foundation partner, but now a Educational Foundation:

https://microbit.org/

lnsru|2 years ago

Raspberry Pi is out of stock everywhere. Triple regular price on eBay.

Take Arduino. It’s probably more adopted than microbit.

idocoder|2 years ago

I can recommend www.gocoderz.com

This is a web based educational program that teaches kids how to code robots and problem solve.

Some of the activities are real life scenarios - such as the Amazon cyber robotics challenge. In this activity kids code the Amazon robot in a simulated warehouse.

Enjoy!

arnaud_lamy|2 years ago

Try powerz, it's a tiny RPG for children with education in it. It's a game at first and not an edu app gamified. https://powerz.tech

ajonit|2 years ago

I can relate to you, always looking for activities that are both fun and productive to keep her busy. Every evening I spend time and let speak her mind, her thoughts about school or whatever goes in her mind. She has never ending "Why?" :)

Few things she had liked so far -

  World/Asia/Country specific maps arranged as puzzles.
  Legos/Block games.
  Coloring books.
  Cycling.
Starting scratch this weekend - https://scratch.mit.edu/

wiradikusuma|2 years ago

I feel depressed.

My boys are 8 and 4, and they're both only interested in "hack and slash" computer games, so I bought local co-op like Ninja Turtles and Castle Crashers. I tried giving them "puzzle" games, they're not interested. I tried giving them books (and I also read the books for them), they always "Daddy can we play games".

Still thinking how to make them interested in programming. The Pi I gave them, they use it to play YouTube only.

getwiththeprog|2 years ago

With respect, may I suggest that you think about spending more time with them, rather than providing for them.

It sounds like they have watched lots of TV and need to have better role-models around and interacting with them.

Maybe (if you have the financial capacity) take a holiday and go explore the world with them without any youtube or games.

I would not allow them to use youtube! But don't beat on em! Kids just follow what they see around them - so to change them you will have to change their environment.

All the best, I imagine balancing work and income with good kids is difficult. My advice, if you earn enough to eat and have a house you earn enough.

turtleyacht|2 years ago

Model out games on paper. Graph paper. Give them crayons and markers.

Tape up a board game out of construction paper and cardboard. Glue stuff to popsicle sticks. Create adhoc, six-sided dice.

Use a firewall to block sites.

Programming is modeling abstractions. Don't need a computer for that. Stepwise refinement, encapsulation, and problem decomposition can all be demonstrated without a machine.

Model a linked list with a stages in a game (on paper). A graph is just a path of streets to the ice cream shop. A tree is an upside-down version of the one outside.

Teach them to make something out of nothing, first principles. Read with them.

MagnusPhallus|2 years ago

So much of this depends on your kid.

What worked for us (8 year old boy) has been Lego, Turing Tumble, Gravitrax, Lego and Lego.

RE what's age-appropriate, Turing Tumble he got when he was 6, and it worked fine for him. Legos have been a thing since he was a toddler.

Minecraft is also something that our son enjoys, and I don't feel too terrible about him playing online w/ friends, as it is pretty creative, but I do worry about excessive time on screens.

darkteflon|2 years ago

You might also like to consider Lego?

Franzeus|2 years ago

Unfortunately we have't launched yet, but you may love https://dibulo.com for her next vacation. We focus on an off-screen coloring experience, where you bring your drawings to life.

Currently we are looking for testers and input from parents, so feel free (anyone) to send me a mail to hn@dibulo.com if you don't mind an early version.

csmeyer|2 years ago

I made Pickcode, where kids can make chatbots and graphic designs using a hybrid visual/text programming language. https://app.pickcode.io/courses has 5 lessons (todo: make many more), I would say the ones listed as beginner could be fun to pair on with a 7 year old!

CTDOCodebases|2 years ago

Not really a book for kids but there is a book called "Drawing on the right side of the Brain" by Penny Edwards. It teaches life drawing and has a series of exercises that help the reader to draw what they actually see.

rahimnathwani|2 years ago

I think Betty got autocorrected to Penny!

paradite|2 years ago

I'm building mobile games where you can use AI and machine learning to solve different puzzles.

It has some fans among teenagers: https://ai-simulator.com/

ankaAr|2 years ago

Meccano sets.

For MEV! I love them even 30 years after I got my set, was one of the best "toys" I got as a child.

All old Lego mindstorm are amazing also.

Primo is a toy for even younger people that is cute and teach them about sequences of actions and how to set that.

mysterydip|2 years ago

The Mega Wow series on PBS kids are short (7 mins), entertaining, thought-provoking, and has a science activity you can try at home (though some take longer to set up like one on plants bending towards light sources).

rrr83|2 years ago

Thanks for the comments everyone, got to know so many new stuff to explore.

daydream|2 years ago

Science Comics is a really well done series of comics explaining various topics. Highly recommend especially if there’s a topic your child is really into already.

fractalf|2 years ago

This thread is _amazing_ , thank you all very much! I've been struggling to find activities for my own 7 yo, now I have plenty :)

ckz|2 years ago

Time to introduce Myst!

My dad set me up with it + his notes from an incomplete attempt around age 5 or 6 and I probably didn't beat it until 7 or 8 (and continued like this for the next few games).

Here's my theory for a game like this vs something that's pure "learn to code/draw": Give her a world to explore that builds the -drive- to create.

I like Myst as a starter because:

1) It's unhurried. I wandered for a year learning what elements in each environment were interactive and slowly making sense of the puzzles. You -have- to simply explore and figure it out.

2) The worlds in it are masterpieces of art and creative thinking. Visually, it remains very engaging (the later games even more so) and you can tell it was a labor of love by a small team (particularly 2 brothers). Just as with books or nutrition, you want you and your children to be consistently exposed to the best of a given subject because that sets the imagination churning on what's possible and starts the process from a high bar.

3) It's a clever way to encourage familiarity and use of professional digital creative technologies (computer, mouse, etc.) rather than building additional affinity for touchscreens (which will happen naturally). Obviously you can create _a lot_ on a phone/tablet, but there's just more junk food around and it's easier to limit sources of temptation/mediocrity rather than fight them. I'd rather train my young child's willpower and self-regulation on easier opponents than modern apps, streaming, etc. :)

tl;dr- Anecdote of one: I consider the Myst series to be an important early step in my eventual journey into creative work and entrepreneurship (high school) and later a hybrid career in design/dev more broadly.

Link: https://www.gog.com/en/game/myst_masterpiece_edition (there are also newer 3D re-releases which retain most of the qualities of the original, but I think the values above are best expressed through the static scenes of the early editions and that, at 7, the new-shiny is missed less).

^ If you skim past the whatever was up with the Win7 reviews, you'll see my sentiments echoed -a lot- in the reviews. :)

turtleyacht|2 years ago

That's awesome. Now I wish I had played more adventure games and kept notebooks. What an experience to connect the digital with a custom keepsake in the physical realm.

I remember Ultima Online and Everquest with its cloth maps. But a notebook from Dad is something else.

philips|2 years ago

Rebrickable and stud.io are great to learn about CAD and Lego

andrey_utkin|2 years ago

GCompris, Tuxpaint, espeak, cowsay

rkagerer|2 years ago

Kerbal Space Program

hardha87|2 years ago

Wasting your time get son

eimrine|2 years ago

How about just talking as much time as possible?

Books are always boring, especially ebooks. Games can not be creative, except of maybe sport activities. Just go somewhere outdoors and who knows maybe you will manage to buy some good books or maybe you will manage to find some street games to explore. Walking and talking about the right things is the very source of our culture, Pythagoreans used to educate themselves in this way.

If you are just going to throw at her the device which is got to be charged with all the best links you will find here - it won't work, those devices are made in such a way to make the user to be used nowadays.

schwartzworld|2 years ago

Your comment is so weird and tone-deaf. Someone asks for game recommendations and you tut tut at them for it. If you don't have anything constructive to contribute to the conversation, why comment at all?

> How about just talking as much time as possible?

If OPs seven year old is anything like mine, this is the default. Getting them to stop talking to you is the trick. Sounds selfish and shitty right? But nobody can talk to a seven year old all day every day while on vacation. "Why don't you just talk for 12 hours a day for an entire week straight?" Ridiculous.

And it's worth noting that the cat is out of the bag by 7: they know video games exist and want to use them. Because so many of them are low quality, parents may have to seek recommendations like this thread.