Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#1

Post by SeanDav » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 3:55 PM UTC

I have 2 young children (below 8 years) and would like to start teaching them programming skills. They are already fairly competent using a laptop for navigating, playing games and watching online TV/Videos.

I personally got started hacking around with a Commodore VIC-20 but there is nothing as basic (excuse the pun) as this, which would create a nice gentle learning curve, around these days.

Really looking for suggestions from others that might have done this or know something about it.

I would assume it would have to be an interpreter-like environment, with easy ways to make pretty and interesting graphics/sound effects but some ability to increase complexity to simple game programming levels.

Open to all suggestions.

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#2

Post by joaoheleno » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 4:01 PM UTC

Take a look at Scratch.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#3

Post by debacle » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

While bleedingly simple, Code Academy does have a lot of merits.

I find that if my son (8) is on his own, he has trouble making it through sections, but if I'm in the room with him, he can ask me questions about why things work the way they do.

In my experience, trying to teach him to program before this year was very difficult. Kids these days just don't seem to have the patience.

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#4

Post by eedahlgren » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 4:15 PM UTC

I have never tried this, but I do know that children thrive on the attention that what they're doing is important. Especially if what they're doing requires hard work. If and when you do find the right environment (one doesn't automatically come to mind if the Python or Racket interpreters aren't good enough for you), giving your children little puzzles that you think up and solve yourself -- so they can come to you for constant hints or suggestive half-examples -- is important. Your constant interest in their hard efforts will go a long way.

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#5

Post by rms25 » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 4:43 PM UTC

A raspberry pi with the appropriate programs installed might be a good choice. Its what I plan on giving my nephew when its more avialable.

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#6

Post by karmen » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 4:46 PM UTC

http://shoesrb.com/

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#7

Post by rbrady » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 4:46 PM UTC

My 6 year old has been learning via http://hackety.com/

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#8

Post by karmen » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 4:48 PM UTC

karmen wrote: post #6

http://shoesrb.com/

lessons here: http://hackety.com/

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#9

Post by sarrazin » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 5:06 PM UTC

Alice http://www.alice.org/ is a great resource for learning basic coding ideas in a way that lets you visually see what different logical structures do. It can be used to create a 3D virtual world, but it also has a view where you can see just the code part.

Re: Ask HN: How to teach my young children to program?

#10

Post by mryan » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 5:52 PM UTC

My nephew and I have had some success with "Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners". Many parts of the book direct the student to try out the examples in the interpreter, which I think is a nice way of demonstrating the concepts immediately. It starts with strings and other basics, and gets gradually more complex. By the end of the book you will have "written" a basic skiing game with pygame.

http://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Begin...