Chrissy Rey created Pongos Learning Lab in 2015. Her 9-year-old son had been asking her to show him how to make computer games since he was in Kindergarten after she volunteered for Career Day at his school and shared some games she made for clients. She started off teaching him how to use Scratch, and when he mastered that, she started teaching him to make simple mods for Minecraft. After moving her company, Pongos Interactive, to Crofton, MD, she had a large conference room and decided to invite some of her son’s friends to learn how to code with him. That lead to Minecraft gaming nights and more coding classes. We called it Coder Kids Club. Over the years, we expanded our offerings to encompass science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) and decided that since we weren’t just a coding program anymore, we needed to change the name. Thus we became Pongos Learning Lab.
Since 2015, we have taught thousands of kids how to code, make YouTube videos, build robots, have fun with science, and much more. In addition, we added birthday parties, scout badge workshops, after-school enrichment programs, and many new clubs to our offerings. We hope to continue innovating and showing kids just how fun STEAM can be.