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Ask HN: What Programming Languages/Tools I use to teach a 6 year old

6 points by Rain_maker ↗ HN
I am Planning to spend a few days with my six year old niece. What can be the Right Programming Language/ Tools I can use to initiate her into programming..

Any nice small project ideas for her would be an added bonus

9 comments

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edent
Scratch. http://scratch.mit.edu/

It's perfect for teaching the very basics of computing while working towards a fun goal - creating a simple game.

Rain_maker
Fantastic! Exactly what i was looking for..
UnoriginalGuy
I believe MIT's Scratch also ships on the Raspberry PI. So if you wanted you could give him his own little computer with the software on it.
jejones3141
Take a look at http://www.alice.org/
Rain_maker
A quick look gives an impression that its a bit advanced than what i am looking for... any how will take a thorough look when i have some time.. Thanks
brudgers
I suspect there are people on HN who were introduced to computers at that age. I know there are people with children who have an interest. I've read about them. Invariably, their children become interested when that's what a parent is doing at home. Their interest lets them share their parent's time and passion.

If you want to make a difference in a child's life, take her seriously as a person. Bring the Estes model rocket kit. Go kick a soccer ball. As my son put it to me recently when I was taking one on one basketball too seriously, kid up.

The odds of a six year old getting anything out of programming class - and that's what is being considered - are orders of magnitude lower than the odds of an adult thinking that a programming class will make a difference in a six year old's life.

Rain_maker
She is Already interested in what i do... I am not gonna force her do anything..

The odds of her getting some value out of it, I am not sure... That Will be an interesting follow up post may be 10 years later..

ejenkinsiii
BASH and using the command line creating files and folders on the command line then launching the desktop to give them something tangible, what ever you you do in the text world can have an effect in the graphics world, my son is six and we use scratch, normally he just wants to draw pictures when he's working with it, but in order to get to scratch he has a few small tasks before he can access the gui like create a work folder etc... to access the desktop "startx". I recall starting with a full court press for him to program, but had to ease up he's 6, 10min explanation allow him to implement the task explained and continue with your fun, at this rate he won't hate it, but will have working knowledge and concepts before we put him in a camp age 8 hopefully.

Funny thing is that he's constantly asking when can we get on the RaspberryPi again.

So the no pressure method is working for him.

1.My apologies for the rant on HN 2.I'm on mobile 3.And this topic hits home

Hisako1337
http://hackety.com/

An all-in-one package to fiddle with the very basics, get a visual result (children LOVE visual stuff way more than CLI), and has some kind of IDE for kids built-in.