Why You Should Help Your Kid Create a Website

If you love to be creative with your children like I do, then you can bet your children will come up with some ideas of their own, or have a desire to show off what they do. In today’s tech-forward world, kids have a much greater desire to put themselves in front of a camera, get on YouTube, and share their voice with similarly-minded kids. And since today’s children are constantly consuming media, so why not encourage them to create some media of their own?

If you’ve noticed that your children like writing, designing, shooting videos like these popular kid bloggers, then you should consider working with them to create their own websites to showcase their talents digitally. Here’s why:

Encourage Their Creativity

There are countless creative decisions to be made when it comes to creating a website. The biggest creative decision they’ll make is deciding on a theme. For example, if they were interested in a particular hobby, there’s probably a WordPress theme to match it. Otherwise, there are plenty of colorful children’s themes to choose from.  

Once they’ve chosen a theme, they can go on to make as many customizations as they’d like, choosing the colors, fonts, layout, and more. And it’s not just the website design that encourages creativity. They’ll be able to write whatever content their hearts desire, take photographs and post them online, and share their videos.

Teach Them About Tech Early

Starting a website helps you teach children about web design and coding early, and if you’re hoping to instill lifelong skills, these are lucrative talents for the future. For instance, start by taking the time to watch a YouTube video about launching a website. Or, depending on their age, watch it independently and explain it to them in layman’s terms.

Start off by choosing a domain for your child, then a hosting platform. As you go through the motions of making these decisions (for example, you want to allow them to give input on what the name of their website will be), you can explain to them what you’re doing each step of the way, even going as far as to monitor them as they make website decisions under your guidance.

With each new task, work with them to get it done. For example, if their website and channel gained popularity and the traffic started to increase, you might have to upgrade your hosting plan. In a situation like this, you’d want to explain to them why you’re upgrading it (too much traffic on a shared hosting plan could crash the site) so that they understand what’s going on and can retain that information for the future.

Helps Them Focus on a Topic

It’s no surprise that children can be a handful, and are constantly moving their interests from one direction to the next. A child having their own website encourages them to focus on a specific niche or topic. Do they want to focus on sports, hobbies and crafts, dance, or video games? The sky’s the limit when it comes to choosing a topic, but it’s important to talk to your child about the type of content they plan on creating in relation to that topic.

They Can Still Have Fun

Even though creating a website requires some patience and dedication, it’s still an incredibly rewarding experience. Once their website goes live, they’ll be happy to see a final published version that anyone can visit—a website of their very own. In addition to creating blog posts and videos, your children can also add interactive elements.

For example, there are plenty of cool quiz creators (like the Online Quiz Creator or QuizBean) that your children can make and embed on their site, encouraging others to take their custom quizzes. If your kids like to write, there are also several digital storytelling apps that help children enhance their writing and share their stories with the online community.

See From Their Perspective

Children view the world differently, and as a parent, it would be interesting and insightful to better understand their perspective of what’s going on around them. For example, in one of my previous posts, I talked about family road trip tips. Maybe your little one has some family road trip tips of their own that would help children have a better time. If they went to Disney World and want to write or video blog about their experience, you’re able to truly hone in on what it’s like for them to share those same experiences with you.