What websites, apps, tools, videos have you decided on to teach your children programming? Are you using only online resources, or also traditional classroom setting? What do you like about the apps and tools you are using, and what could be improved?
Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
1–10 of 66 posts
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#2I would not. Kids should be outside playing and interacting with other kids, not coding.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#3By cultivating interest, not by forcing them into it.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#4I would not. Kids should be outside playing and interacting with other kids, not coding.
Why are those two things mutually exclusive?
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#5I would not. Kids should be outside playing and interacting with other kids, not coding.
They aren't asking for parenting advice here. Kids need more than just playing outside, hence the whole school thing.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#6This has been an interesting topic for my wife and I. Our kids have very limited screen time, and do not have access to a computer / smart phone / iPad on a regular basis.
Recently, though, my 1st grade son, the oldest, found the book "Coding Projects in Python" (https://www.dk.com/us/9781465461889-coding-projects-in-pytho...), and read through it for about a week before asking if he could use my computer to try some of the projects out. I set him up on an old linux box with no internet access, opened a text editor (gedit), and showed him how to run his scripts in the terminal.
Honestly, I thought he would loose interest after a few days. But he has stuck with it for the last few weeks, working on the projects after school with minimal help from me (I work from home). So far, he learns what he is interested in, skipping around the book to find projects he likes. He has learned a fair amount in that time, and importantly for me, is learning a bit about how the computer works at the same time. Not sure where we will go from here, but the self-directed path is working well so far.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#7I do it very haphazardly. I've used hour of code, apple's swift training program on the iPad, scratch, cargobot, sprite-box, the new bbc micro with some ms programming tool. But I've only spent a few minutes on each tool ocassionally. My impression is that you don't necessarily need a concerted effort. My youngest learned reading when he was 5 through a rather lazy approch from me and my wife. We just did stuff ocassionally at the spur of the moment. Some ideas seem to just need time with kids.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#8By cultivating interest, not by forcing them into it.
And how to do that ?
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#9I'm not.
But they do occasionally come over and ask me what I'm doing. When they do, I explain.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#10This has been an interesting topic for my wife and I. Our kids have very limited screen time, and do not have access to a computer / smart phone / iPad on a regular basis. Recently, though, my 1st grade son, the oldest, found the book "Coding Projects in Python" ( https://www.dk.com/us/9781465461889-coding-projects-in-pytho... ), and read through it for about a week before asking if he could use my computer to try so…
Your son is impressive! My daughter is 3 now and I pray she follows a path like this. Obviously I will love her regardless ;)