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My 9 year old girl has expressed an interest in learning to program. Of course I want something that will give her short term rewards, but still teach solid skills. I know this question gets asked from time to time on various forums but I wanted to get some opinions from the good people of SN.
Christmas is coming... she's (for now) a Windows user... is there something you'd recommend as a gift?
Thanks for your ideas.
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Introducing Programming to a Child
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:44PM
Coding is just a compiler function. Teacher her logic and math. That is what is important.
Logic goes both to ORs and Ands, but also causality.
Math is gets into the use of symbols as well as problem solving.
With those two things, language is not important. Skills are are also useful in other area including Law and Life Sciences.
I have played the following games with my kids, all girls since they were 4 or 5. Oldest finished college is 3yrs with math degree, others are top of the classes specially in math.
Look to games like:
Krypto: here is web version: http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activity.aspx?id=3569 [nctm.org] Simpler form can be played with 6 dices oe a deck of cards.
Euclid (from a Scientific American article in the 80's): Teaches "block-box" thinking and thought problems.
A card game played with 8 to 12 decks of cards. The "god"/dealer defines rules of how cards are played and writes it down! Like odd, even, odd, ... or ascending, then face card, descending, then face card, ascending... Players starting with 7 to 12 cards, try to figure out what the order is by playing 1 to 3 cards per play. Either they all past the rule or not (no partial answers). If failed, the player collects 2 cards for each played. Good plays are placed on the table going across, bad plays go down (with multiple cards plays tother in order "of play". Once a player thinks he knows the rule, immediately after is his last play to confirm his theory , he can become "prophet", he says past or fails and "god" confirms. If "prophet" is wrong is 15 cards are added to his hand. Goal is being the first to use all cards in your hand. Scoring over multiple games is based on total number of cards played in "god" and "prophet" roles. So hard rules like "only reds accending wrappong at Ace" will have a lot of cards played "prophet" and "god" so better long term score.