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Introducing Programming to a Child

posted by martyb on Thursday December 03 2015, @11:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the making-introductions dept.

Justin Case writes:

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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  • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday December 03 2015, @10:18PM

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Thursday December 03 2015, @10:18PM (#271588) Homepage Journal

    My kids have been playing with Logo off and on for awhile.

    I would also recommend Logo. I have used it quite successfully to introduce programming to people and we start with a piece of paper, a pen, their hand, and them turning their hand into a robot. Pen up, pen down, move around - we do it all together first then I let them at a computer. It is a great way to get them to think about managing a simple black box in detail so they have the right frame of mind when they start using the computer.

    I've never tried to teach a 9 year old to program but I had people try to get me to learn to program at that age by giving me a C++ book. That isn't something I'd recommend.

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