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Programming For a 7 Year Old

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I am not a software programmer, but I would like my young children to start learning the basics of progamming and logic. In the early days of Commodore 64, the BASIC language was so simple. The first time a child typed
10 Print “Dog”
20 Goto 10
was a thrill.
Nowadays it seems the languages (or the development environments for those languages) are so complicated. Is there a programming language/environment specifically designed to teach children?

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Clarifications

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

Clarifications

KPL

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

Have a look at this thread http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=214559
It mentions KPL, which might be useful. http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/kids.php

Perfect!

In reply to KPL

Thanks for the links. These look great.

Check out

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

The post in discussions, “computer for a 9 yr old” theres some pretty good ideas in there as he is also looking to learn his son to programme, one that I know about is

Home

Good Luck and hope you find what you want 🙂

BASIC link

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

Hi,

Check out this link for a selection of BASIC programs.

http://www.freeware-guide.com/dir/softdev/basic.html

P.S. I have used GWBASIC and a compiler to write a program that can be exectuted at anytime to create a backup of defined files or folders, complete with time date stamp.
Works great, even under XP.

Herb

Lego Mindstorms Programming

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

Lego Mindstorms is a typical Lego kit except that it is for building robots. The programming language is simple but it allows the student to build a robot and then to program the robot to do almost anything. In addition, to the Lego kit, a computer is required.

At the schools where I work, for the past seven years, the students in each grade built some very amazing robots. Each class is 30 hours in duration spread over a month. The robots built and programmed during this time do a wide variety of activities.

The Lego kits combine building using the common Lego parts, plus a brain called the RCX brick, motors, and sensors for touch, light, rotation, heat, and others, and a simple icon based programming language. The programming language allows the child to write a program, download it to the robot, and see the results of the program.

This is a very cool way to learn programming.

Is there a programming language for children

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

The program called Scratch is made for children. You can get it on Sourceforge.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Is there a programming language for children

Yep that true

But don’t you think that providing the advice 5 years after the question was asked that it’s very likely to no longer be required?

Col

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Is there a programming language for children

There are always new kids coming along – and this is a great thread to refresh.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Is there a programming language for children

May I suggest visiting http://scratch.mit.edu where you can download the program directly from the publisher (MIT), view the gallery of projects created by others, and get materials to help beginners of all ages get started. BTW, an Ivy League university uses Scratch in their beginning programming class – this is a powerful tool. Don’t let it’s good looks fool you.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Is there a programming language for children

Col, who the heck even looks at the dates when it shows up near the top of the list? Inly you and Palmy and maybe one or two others.

Cudos on encouraging your children to learn to program

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

Even if they don’t follow the field, its valuable knowledge for understanding a computer, and nearly ever job uses a computer in some way.

On a related issue, when I was doing some programming courses at TAFE

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

many moons ago we had a lot of student friends who had trouble grasping the idea of setting their variables at the start and then doing things in order. I got the concept across to them by getting a simple recipe and having them cook it without getting everything set before hand or doing it in order.

Take a good look at them, and you’ll see almost all recipes are set out the same as a good program:

A list of the needed items and their basic settings,
process materials in the set out order and
use the established routines to do so.

The sad part is so many people do such things naturally each day, but don’t think about that stuff when programming.

Another Programming Resource for Children

In reply to Programming For a 7 Year Old

Another thing you can look at with your child is Scratch. It teaches the logic of programming though not an actual programming language. In it, you can make games and animations. It also has a very vibrant online community and allows users to “remix,” or re-adapt other people’s projects for their own use. I’ve had a summer job for two years teaching it to elementary school students. Like real programming, debugging is a process, and it can be tricky to find the root of the problem.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

Edit: It looks like someone’s already brought Scratch up.

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