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Ask HN: Best resources to teach a 6-year old to program

9 points by bioinformatics ↗ HN
We just gave our son a Raspberry Pi as a birthday present and he is starting to get a grasp on how to use the UI, at least enjoying Minecraft and some other Python games. As he is going to first grade next school year, I was thinking on spending a couple of hours with him a week to teach him the fundamentals of programming (emphasis on the fun) so he can start learning to use the keyboard, create some simple game or some other fun software.

Any ideas are more than welcomed.

Thanks.

10 comments

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danielvf
The opencomputers mod for MineCraft can be a lot of fun.

I also tend to do a lot with my kids by just opening the chrome dev tools and play away with JavaScript and mucking up some random web page.

bioinformatics
He is getting the gist of Minecraft, we have a PS4 with the game, but he likes the mouse interaction more.

Thanks for your comment.

olivercreashe
Give him an issue of Byte magazine and tell him to copy all 30 pages of machine language to the computer using the keyboard. Better yet, tel him that at the end of all the typing, there will be a game to play!

Yay!

bioinformatics
II used to play with my Sinclair and get the code from some Sci-fi books that had games in it.
fiftyacorn
I helped my wife do some lesson plans on computing covering algorithms and collections. It was starting from practical then working out a methodology using games. It worked really well at all levels my wife has used it. I keep meaning to write this up - but never get the time. Although now my son is 5 i might try it with him on a wet afternoon
codycraven
Have super low expectations. I did the same thing with my daughter when she was 6. Got her going on some really basic programming and typing programs. She picked up the UI manipulation well and has gotten decent at typing but hasn't grokked logic flows yet.

Just recently she got a Lego Mindstorms ev3 and the lightbulb just went on when she was using the PC program to program her robot.

So really, just have patience, introduce things to front load but he won't catch on until he's intrinsically motivated at the right time.

bioinformatics
Yes, I have low expectations, but my main early goals is for him to get used to keyboard and mouse, and maybe understand how things are working.

Thanks for your comment.

wslh
My experience is that the efforts an average 6-year old should put to learn programming at that level are very high and at ~9 years old not so high. So except he is very interested/capable I would wait until he grows. I don't think you gain too much starting earlier, in a way I call it parenting anxiety. This is why you don't start teaching them calculus, they are not ready except if they show signals of precocity or giftedness.

Having said that I would start with ScratchJr (https://www.scratchjr.org/) on a tablet and Alice (https://www.alice.org/) on the desktop. Alice will require your assistance for scripting but he would be able to select and position the 3D characters.