So, you have probably heard coding today is like a second language everyone on this planet will have to know by 2025 to get a job and succeed in life. However, still most of jobs do not require to know how to code. So, many parents do not know coding but they would like to teach their kids this important skill.
How to start teaching a kid coding? No, you don’t need to select one the most popular languages and teach your 5 year old programming in Java or C. What you can do is invest some time in developing computational or algorithmic thinking. Start playing games with your child as gamification is the king. 😊 Imagine you are a robot and your child is an engineer who controls a robot behaviour. So now you kid will be giving you instructions where to go and what to do and you will follow them. After a couple of failures and dads or mums hit feet (if you have to much furniture in the room and play robot very well 😊), your child will understand the principles and turn into a robots’ coding master.
At the age of 6-10, start with simple visual programming environments. You don’t need any special knowledge to assist your child with learning coding basics. What’s important here is persistence and patience. And don’t stress you child asking him her to build apps. It is a very bad idea to teach children building apps or web sites at this age. Most of children will be stressed and hate you and coding.
At the age of 10-12, you need to start teaching your child more complex coding concepts and algorithm logic. If you do not have a degree in technical field than the best would be to find a coding school nearby. The best coding school educators are people who have a real experience. They will explain programming concepts and teach your child thinking as development engineers. It is even more important than programming language itself. As when you understand the principles, you are able to learn any programming languages very quickly and without anyone’s help.
After your child learns basics and important concepts, the best way to learn is to practice and learn coding incrementally. Give your child a task, ask to build a web site for you home business or build an app to plan family affairs. And do not push too much. Your child will build the best ever app or a web site when it is the right time for him/her not when you wish it to happen. 😊