School breaks are coming up and your kids will have plenty of time on their hands to play, read and explore. And if you’re looking for some fun holiday activities to get kids coding (and we know you are!) here are a few seasonal game starters to get your kids to create projects for all to enjoy.

We updated a student submitted Halloween game (October 30 blog post) with new themes for your kids to change up and customize. All they need to do to get started is to click “Log in and Remix” and save the project to their Tynker account to make changes.

Help the chef gather ingredients for a Thanksgiving stew. Click to play! Log in and remix “Make Thanksgiving Stew”!

We gave Santa ribbons to “wrap” the presents as gifts fall from the sky. Click to play! Log in and remix “Wrap the Presents”

Here are some great ways to use these projects in the classroom and at home.

1. Ask kids to work in pairs for rich collaboration (these game starters were created by student groups).
2. Encourage kids to follow the student-built tutorial included in “Wrap the Presents”, so that they can build this project on their own (you can save this project to your teacher account and assign it to your class as a lesson).
3. Prompt kids to add an end condition such as: what happens if a gift or soup ingredient is “missed”? Or, Is there a certain number of misses before the game ends?
4. Ask kids to add their own music or artwork to make the game fit a curriculum theme or topic.

Let’s inspire kids to spend time over the holidays creating projects with code. They’ll have fun, they’ll be creative, and they’ll have something awesome to share with their friends. Share projects with us — we look forward to seeing what kids make!

p.s. Parents — your child gets a lifetime Tynker account when you purchase an online course or when they use Tynker at school. With an account, any projects that we publish or share are available for your child to access for free.