Lots of people have mentioned Scratch Jnr, which is a great place to start, but don't stop there. The full version of Scratch is fantastic. My daughter (9) and son (11) both enjoy it, though my son is really into it. They both particularly like the fact that you can remix other people's code - it's a great way to get started.
Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#22My daughter is almost 5 and she picked up Scratch Jr in ten minutes. I am writing my suggestions mostly from the context of a younger child. I approached it this way, I bought a book on Scratch Jr so I could get up to speed on it. I walked her through a few of the basics, and then I just let her take over after that. One other programming related activity we have done is the Learning Resources Code & Go Robot Mouse A…
Friends of mine have the boardgame roborally. You get a bunch of cards with instructions to your robot and have to predict which ones in which order work best. Of course, the environment has some hard-to-predict elements, including other people's robots...
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#23Minecraft with the Python API.
On the Java version of Minecraft you can get it with the Raspberry Juice mod for bukkit: https://github.com/zhuowei/RaspberryJuice
On the Android version of Minecraft you can use the Raspberry Jam Mod https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.omegacent...
The Minecraft version for the Raspberry Pi is very limited, unfortunately.
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#24I'm waiting till he shows significant interest. If that never comes then I'm not going to try to make it happen. Much as I would like to be teaching programming to my kids, if they aren't that interested then such is life.
You don't see it as an essential skill like other branches of math that he should at least be exposed to? Most kids never show an interest in algebra without someone first introducing then to the basics.
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#25I'm waiting till he shows significant interest. If that never comes then I'm not going to try to make it happen. Much as I would like to be teaching programming to my kids, if they aren't that interested then such is life.
yes! the most important lesson from neurostudies and psychology is usually ignored: you can only learn when [feel like] you have control over how to do it. learning simply does not work when you push it. pushing will kill motivation.
I usually only need to get obstacles out of the way and answer questions (if I can). the rest comes from sheer interest from my child. scratch was interesting for just a couple of weeks, now it is java script, raspberry pi / linux, arduino, smartphone app programming using appinventor or any scripting language.
the issue is not programming language, the driving question is "what machine do I want to build".
you might want to check out "coderdojo" at a place near you. usually other kids are better teachers to your kid than you are.
your best instrument to teach tech is to wait and take your kid's questions seriously. patience pays.
what age am I talking about? my child wrote programs and apps long before he was able to read or write. pushing as a motivation killer also applies to adults. so I guess, this "advice" is universal.
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#26Minecraft with the Python API. On the Java version of Minecraft you can get it with the Raspberry Juice mod for bukkit: https://github.com/zhuowei/RaspberryJuice On the Android version of Minecraft you can use the Raspberry Jam Mod https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.omegacent... The Minecraft version for the Raspberry Pi is very limited, unfortunately.
Microsoft has also released a scratch-like environment for programming Minecraft at https://minecraft.makecode.com with a bunch of pretty good course material for teaching programming
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#27My two oldest kids have created plain html web pages with me.
They run on my NAS so not available to the Internet. I try to teach different things to each of them and hopefully they'll start copying and pasting.
I also created the "guess a number" game in Java with my oldest (~10 y.o.) recently. We started by writing comments explaining what would happen, then I filled in the code and we ran it and single stepped our way through it a few times.
I love the debugger as it helps new coders get a feeling for how the computer "thinks".
Java might seem like a weird language to teach kids but for all its verbosity and comments it ended at less than 50 LOC, is extremely readable and has really good support for single stepping, peeking into variables etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#28Awesome question, because I'm in the mids of teaching my 9 and 7 year olds how to program.
They get Scratch in school (and like it), so I wanted to dip their toes into 'real' programming. I thought a lot about it, but decided to start with the interactive shell of Python and let them do basic calculations, variable assignments, etc.
I then went on to simple scripts such as "What is your name?" input, with a print of "Hello "
Next up with be the guess a number game, and go on from there. I want to end up with programming games of course :D
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#29I wish Microsoft would invest 1 or 2 of its many million $ to re-include a simple QBbasic like they did back in the DOS days. I can attribute 95% of my interest in programming to that one single program.
Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
#30My two oldest kids have created plain html web pages with me. They run on my NAS so not available to the Internet. I try to teach different things to each of them and hopefully they'll start copying and pasting. I also created the "guess a number" game in Java with my oldest (~10 y.o.) recently. We started by writing comments explaining what would happen, then I filled in the code and we ran it and single stepped our…
We started by writing comments explaining what would happen, then I filled in the code and we ran it and single stepped our way through it a few times.`