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Want your child to learn a bit of coding but are unsure of where to start? Luckily, there are lots of resources on the internet (and even a few designed to be used offline) that’ll help you get started. There are even resources out there for pre-readers, so check out this list and get coding.
Hour of Code
Hour of Code is a site that will get your child coding with a simple one hour tutorial. That said, they actually have over a hundred different tutorials you can choose from. It doesn’t matter what your child is into, Hour of Code has a tutorial they’ll be into. Star Wars? Frozen? Puppies? Minecraft? Sea life? Doesn’t matter, there’s a tutorial that’ll hold their interest. You can search through tutorials by age groups (including pre-readers), what technology you’re using, what topics your child is interested in, and more.
Robot Turtles
Would you prefer to play a board game with your kids instead of stare at a screen? If so, then, check out Robot Turtles. It’s only $20 on Amazon and it’s a sneaky way to teach kids ages four and up the basics of programing. You set up the game board, which involves creating maze that leads to jewels at the centre of the board. Then your kids play a series of instruction cards that tell their robot turtle how it should navigate the maze. It’s pretty fun and teaches programming.
Tynker
Tynker is a suite of programing exercises, all online, that will take your child from creating simple sequencing games all the way to writing actual lines of code with java and python. Beginner courses are suited to kids age seven, with more advanced courses suited to ages eleven and twelve. Beginner courses are free and the price varies on more advanced plans. Tynker features over one hundred tutorials, including one for modding Minecraft and another for programming drones. It’s pretty cool stuff.
Made With Code, by Google
Google’s Made With Code is geared towards encouraging girls to think about careers in tech and teaching girls to code. Their projects, with themes like Wonder Woman and Pixar’s Inside Out, offer beginners skills like sequencing, variables, and introductory programming languages. The tutorials are free and the site also features stories from a dozen women who code professionally.
Scratch
Scratch, created by MIT, is all about programming interactive stories, animations, and games. If your child isn’t so sure about coding but likes dancing, fashion, baking, games, music, art, and stories, then chances are there’s a tutorial on this site that’ll get them interested in coding too. There’s something for everyone, with over 24,000,000 projects shared, and there’s a pretty active and helpful community too.
