How Can I Teach My Child Coding?

[Annet Rose]

My 12 years old child is interested in programming and would like to learn it. How can I teach him coding?

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch

Adding discussion to another forum.
How much programming do you know yourself? How interested are you in programming yourself? What is the child interested in? Do you have devices like Raspberry Pis or similar already? You should be able to run most programming language on most PCs, except that my latest C book purchase says that there isn't a good range of C compilers for Windows®.

[Ishan Shah]

Here are 10 resources you can use to introduce and teach children about coding and programming easly :

1. KidsRuby: Makes it easy to learn to code.

2. MIT App Inventor: Speaks for itself. Probably more for Middle School-aged children and above.

3. Alice: an introduction to creating simple animated movies and video games through simple object-oriented programming.

4. Scratch: a pretty cool way to start programming movies, games, and interactive stories. Perfect for children about 8 and up.

5. Kodu. A visual programming language for pc.

6. Teaching Kids Programming: a non-profit organization whose website is filled with resources to teach or learn to code from 10 years old and up.

7. Move the Turtle: App for kids 5 and over.

8. Hopscotch: Another brilliant app (apps are easy and visual for younger learners!).

9. Hakitzu Elite: Robot Hackers: Though I usually don't exactly promote these types of games, this combat game teaches the basics of coding while battling robots.

10. Daisy the dinosaur: An easy visual app for all ages, drag and drop still teaches the principles of programming!

I hope this will help you  to teach your child

I

[fred rosenberger]

There is also the Lego First Robotics league.  Many schools and organizations (scouts, YMCA) have teams.  you build and program robots to complete tasks. In the middle school level, the use the Lego Mindstorms system.

[Simson Leigh]

I've also recently started teaching my kids basics of coding and recommend all of the resources listed above.
My recommendations for books include:

"Computational Fairy Tales" by Jeremy Kubica - This is a book that explains problem solving using algorithms and data structures in a way that is easy for kids to understand.
Hello Ruby series - Educational story and activities to learn coding.
Young Rewired state books - Story driven way for kids to learn for example HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

The other activity that we are doing is using CodeMonkey to learn basics of game programming.

[Mark Ii]

Annet Rose wrote:My 12 years old child is interested in programming and would like to learn it. How can I teach him coding?

Below you will find a link.

Tutorials and Apps for Children's coding


Hope it helps.

[Les Morgan]

I taught my kids programming the same way I learned in college, the teacher makes the appropriate framework for the student to do their work and studies in, then give them an assignment that is age appropriate and child interest specific.  then have a discussion on the part you want them to fill in or what you want to do that is learning specific for their level.  May kids will NOT pick up a book and read it, especially a technical manual on how to program or on Java or any other language.

the first things I did with them was just make bounding balls.  I made a graphics engine that you would drop a graphics object into a specific folder and it would instantiate the object in the running instance and the child could see their object bounding around the screen.  They were younger than 12, but that is the first step in understanding objects and creation of dependent object to interact in a known environment.  they loved it.

I had them make their favorite color geometric object, shape, as supported by Java and I'd drop it in, then have them make changes like color, shape, or movement and they could see it change on the screen and see the multiple object interact.  I would then ask them what they thought and we would go from there, often it became the child telling me where they wanted to go for many lessons.  I was happy to do so, because they were engaged and they were getting hands on.

One thing in this to remember: if it's not fun, then a kid will just drop it.  There is no carrot at the end of the stick trying to get them to understand college prep, college study, problem solving, or a future career.  it has to be fun and they must want to do it, so keep them engaged by letting them help design, tell you, what they want to do.  do not fall into the trap of saying: "here is the Java tutorial..."  that is a sure way of getting a kid to find other interestes.

[Mark Ii]

From Runestone's Interactive Python Tutorial there is a section where you can use Turtle to draw fun graphics. You can try to introduce them to graphics first so they see how cool programming can be.

Here is a chapter and URL of second chapter from that website. It's very fun. It's interactive also. You can code yourself if you want to.

Runestone Interactive Python Turtle Graphics: Our first Turtle Program

Python is a very simple programming language. I enjoyed the tutorial. And loved the programming language.

[Shehan Timothy]

"think twice, code once" as they say. I would encourage to create a process that helps your child to first become a better thinker and in turn to be a better coder. Developing his/her ability to be a good thinker and creating the enthusiasm to code the process/program that your Child thought of would go a long way I believe.

Have you taught your child the usage of flowcharts as a simple method to visualize the input and output of code. There are a multitude of online flowcharting software programs that allow you to quickly and easily visualize your programs. These come with built in shapes that demonstrate areas in coding such as input, output, connectors, decision, terminal and so forth. Have your child give it a try.

The practice of effectively planning and detailing out a process before development allows for more robust programs. Flowcharting is key to developing a broader way of thinking, and it allows you to account for more of the “big picture” stuff.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Agree that you need to learn to think, but a child with a short attention span will need to see something working quickly.

[Shehan Timothy]

Agree with you Campbell. If the attention span is short then first step is to find a method/tool that help the child generate quick results.

[Campbell Ritchie]

A tool as in IS' list, maybe.

[Annet Rose]

Thank you all for these suggestions. I will check it. I got one more suggestion, codingforkid.com. Have any heard about this platform? Is this good?

[Campbell Ritchie]

Annet Rose wrote:. . . codingforkid.com. . . .

Not heard of it before.
Where is it from? Its front page (milestone 02) says nobody should be left in the residue (sic), so it looks like a translation into English.

Does your son have any hardware? I was thinking of Raspberry Pis and similar, which I seem to have asked about already.

[Paul Clapham]

Annet Rose wrote: codingforkid.com. Is this good?

I looked at it and it looks like it's trying to get you to sign up for classes in Dubai. So, I don't think it would be useful for you.

[Jack Will]

Coding is a future of this digital era and teaching programming to your child is great way to build their future. I'm listing some great resources which really helps Childs for learning programming.
1) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daisy-the-dinosaur/id490514278
2) http://kidsruby.com/about
3) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/move-the-turtle-learn-to-code/id509013878
4) https://nextideatech.com/web-development-and-web-designing/

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch

I only had a quick look, but you seem to have some good stuff there

[Campbell Ritchie]

Somebody has pointed out that you might have connections with some of those products you are suggesting. It would be dishonest of anybody to do that without mentioning that it is their own product or that they work with its supplier.