What is the best way to teach kids programming?

Programming is giving a set of instructions to a computer to execute. If you’ve ever cooked using a recipe before, you can think of yourself as the computer and the recipe’s author as a programmer. The recipe author provides you with a set of instructions that you read and then follow. The more complex the instructions, the more complex the result!

Coding has become an essential part of learning in this digital age. Where everything around us runs on technology, it has become highly imperative to understand how it works. Coding is a creative process, and Kids tend to learn to code more quickly as their imagination power is very high, which is a real asset when it comes to finding creative solutions to real-world problems. Many apps and resources are created for kids to learn to code, but teaching coding doesn’t only require giving them the right tool. It also requires patiently showing them how it works.

1. Define coding: Through all of this, one key piece of advice I can give is to understand the boundaries of what you know and what you don’t know. Many of you might be more in the “there’s a lot I don’t know” camp, and again, totally fine! No judgment here. In fact, all of these tactics are encouraged. If your student is a coding beginner, then all of these methods are only going to make it easier for them to grasp the foundational concepts required to build to the more complex.
2. Use Scratch for younger kids, Python for older kids: MIT’s Scratch is a free programming tool designed for kids that runs in any modern Web browser. Kids between the ages of 8 and 13 will benefit from Scratch’s simple graphical interface. Scratch’s drag-and-drop code blocks snap together. Pieces of code that don’t make computational sense won’t fit together, making syntax errors literally impossible. Scratch is great for younger kids who haven’t developed typing skills.
3. Games are fun programming projects: Be warned that games your kid’s love might not make great programming projects when they’re just starting out. Many games require teams of developers, artists, and designers to put together. Games that require a lot of level design and artwork can overwhelm beginners. It’s much more satisfying to complete a simple game than to start and never finish a massive project.
4. Follow Adaptive Teaching for their Age Group: While teaching coding to your child, you may not be able to follow a strategic teaching plan, as kids of different age groups tend to learn coding in different ways. For example, Kids in their early-stage learn through logical games that emulate how programs work. It can even be some video lesson to introduce what is programming. Kids can read and understand the instructions to use real programming languages to learn to code at later stages. Adaptive learning always helps better to grasp coding skills.
5. Get familiar with coding terms: At this point, you’re hopefully thinking that this all looks pretty cool and fun, right? But maybe somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re also wondering about how all of this works and how you can begin to intelligently talk about how all of this works. To be fully transparent, there is a lot in the way of coding vocabulary you’ll want to familiarize yourself with when trying to explain coding to kids! We won’t get into them all, but you can kick things off with these.

By doing this, you will not only enable them to take an interest in coding but will also help them in learning the practical use of coding in real-world applications and problem-solving. This kind of learning will feel rewarding for them and they will take it as a fun activity. If you choose wisely, it will be both fun and academic learning for your kid.