Kathy Ceceri is an award-winning writer and educator, and the author of more than a dozen books of hands-on STEAM activities for kids and teens. Formerly the Homeschooling Expert at About.com (now ThoughtCo), she wrote the Hands-On Learning column for Home Education magazine and taught her own two children at home from kindergarten until college. More recently, she has created STEAM learning materials for technology companies including Adafruit Industries, and helped the Girl Scouts of the USA develop robotics badges and a nationwide cybersecurity challenge.

Kathy has written about family life and learning for print publications and online media outlets including Make magazine, Wired, and FamilyFun. Her own family’s “at-home” science blogs were featured in The New York Times and the American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News. She continues to offer advice and consulting to homeschooling families in New York and beyond. Learn more at kathyceceri.com, @kathyceceri on Twitter, and DIY Homeschool with Kathy Ceceri on Facebook.

Check out Kathy’s upcoming classes with SEA Online Classes!

Got kids who would love to create their own programmable toys, games, and costumes? Free online Microsoft MakeCode is a great first programming language for elementary and middle-school artists and engineers. It lets you control color-changing lights, musical notes, and motors to make playthings and wearables that move! It even includes MakeCode Arcade for designing fun 2D pixel games. See some of the projects you can build using inexpensive, easy to connect microcontroller boards, the computer science concepts kids will learn, and places to find tutorials and instruction your students can use on their own or with your help.