Teaching Devina to Code

I introduced both of my children to arduino at age 7. My son took to it instantly and in weeks was producing things that surprised me. My daughter could not have been less interested; struggled through to few things I showed her forgot it as soon as the lesson was over.

This is how it stayed until the day some random project of my son's involved placing a servo inside a small stuffed toy. The moment my daughter saw the little toy turn and "look" at her, there was nothing in the world that could stop her from trying to learn how to do this herself.

You can't teach your child to code, only present it in a way that will interest them. If you succeed you will not be able to stop them. No one else will be able to either.

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” ― Stanley Kubrick

1) ask her if she has any interested in programming.

A huge barrier for many people is they have no understanding of what programming will enable, what it entails, and its varying difficulty levels.

I think there are so many "pre-med" college freshmen because everyone understands the role of a doctor. If programming were more tangible and widely understood, there would be far more people doing it (and luckily this is rapidly happening).

It may be that for some younger kids, the idea of the computer "doing" something seems more meaningful if the computer is doing something physical.

Making this visual does wonders for kids. I think that's why Alan Kay went with Scratch the way it is.