Tips on Teaching Your Child How to Code

Are your children bored out of their minds at home? With schools and education centres shifting to home-based learning, you may find yourself having to take on an additional role of teacher for your child. Unfortunately, there are far fewer textbooks and guides for teaching preschool-level children and younger. If you have little to no experience in coaching your child, it may seem to be a daunting task. You may be wondering: how do I know what kind of content to teach my child? How can I scale it to a level that is easy for them to understand? Can I make it entertaining enough to capture their attention? Add these challenges on to a regular work schedule, and the problem intensifies.

If this sounds like you, we have some good news. We know just the topic you can use to teach your kids that will keep them occupied for hours on end. They will be able to pick up valuable problem-solving and critical thinking skills, while exercising their imagination and creativity. What’s best, this fun activity can provide them with valuable skills relevant to the times that might just secure them a job in the future? This activity is none other than coding.

Why Coding?

This gem has only surfaced in recent years as an enrichment class for kids, but has made its mark on numerous children of all ages, from pre-schoolers to teenagers. No kid is too young to learn coding – if they can read and write, they can learn coding too!

Coding is a unique enrichment subject in that it trains both the left and right brain at once. While kids learn about logic and processing when coding, they are also able to build applications out of their own imagination. There is no single correct answer in coding, which enables children to think out of the box and apply their own understanding to solve the problem.

Additionally, having a coding background gives one a valuable advantage when they enter the job market in the future. In today’s digital world, coding is a highly prized skill. You don’t have to have formal qualifications in coding to prove your worth in the field. In fact, many professional coders are self-taught, and it is completely possible to provide your children with such an opportunity in the comfort of your home.

Teaching your children to code is usually much less difficult than most parents expect. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be an experienced programmer to guide your children in their coding journey.

Read Up on the Basics

If you plan to personally teach your children, it never hurts to get some basic knowledge on coding, especially if this is your first time touching programming. One easy way to pick up coding is to read up on beginner guides, many of which are available both online and in programming books at any library. If you prefer video tutorials, there are plenty of them on the web. You’ll also have to decide on what programming language you plan to teach your kids. For a complete newbie to coding, we recommend going with Python or JavaScript, both of which are easy to pick up and highly transferrable.

Start Small

Nobody expects a complete programming novice to come up with a full-fledged application on the spot, so don’t sweat it. You can begin by giving your child a simple task to code, such as a “hello world” message. Start with the basics to test the waters. We find that most children struggle most with getting started on coding, because they probably do not even know what it is all about. Once your child is comfortable enough finding their way around a text editor, you can then progress on to introducing more coding techniques and problems and perhaps enrol them in a coding class for kids.

Use Analogies

Is your child having a difficult time wrapping their head around a particular concept? You may have to break the concept down into bite-sized tidbits of information for them to have an easier time digesting. One great way to do this is to use analogies and examples. If you need a list of popular analogies for different coding concepts, there are plenty of online resources to help with that.

Consider an Online Coding Class for Kids

Perhaps you’ve decided that coding is not really your thing, or maybe you just don’t have the time to devote to preparing coding lessons for your child. Don’t worry, as there are still plenty of ways your child can learn coding! For older kids such as teenagers, signing them up for an online coding class for teens can be a viable idea. It not only keeps them busy, but also encourages them to be independent and study on their own!