Marshall Brain's Blog

David (age 8) is interested in robots. That interest scored him a Lego Mindstorms robot kit for Christmas one year. Once he built a robot, he had to "program" it. That made him aware of programming. Then he wanted to learn more about programming.

If you have a kid who would like to learn to program, one simple place to start is this page:

Botz puzzles

You have to register, but otherwise the site is free. You can learn some simple programming concepts here.

But if you want to teach/learn about "real" programming, you end up with an interesting question -- which language to use? Should it be C? C++? Java? Python? It is a hard choice because there are cost issues, learning curve issues, palatability issues, etc. After doing some research, this is the language that David and I have been using:

Kids programming language

Here are some of its advantages: it is free, it is easy to download, it comes with a ton of example code, and you can do "real" stuff with a (relatively) small amount of code. Also, many of the examples are games, which David really enjoys, and letting him load/compile/run games was an easy way to get him interested in the KPL package. And it works. We have had no problems with it.

The first thing we did was to take sample programs and try modifying them in very simple ways. For example, we took the "maze" program and we changed the width and color of the lines in the maze. Really simple stuff like that.

Next we tried a very simple program - draw a single line on the screen. It takes 3 or 4 lines of code to do that, and you can easily figure out what the lines of code need to be by looking at examples.

Next he drew a triangle. That taught him about coordinates. Then he drew 5 triangles side by side using a loop. That taught him about loops. Then we used a method to draw the triangle, to learn about methods.

Next we drew a simple 3x3 grid. Then we colored the squares on the grid (like a checkerboard). Now we are using loops to do it so we can draw an actual checkerboard.

Overall, it has been a lot of fun doing this. I would say that age 7 or 8 is a good starting age. Your kid needs to be able to read and write, and knowing how to multiply seems to be almost essential. If you want to go younger than that, you probably could because the language has some Logo-like turtle commands like MoveTo and Pen. But we used the Botz puzzles mentioned above to move through that stage.

There are two things that I have found interesting in watching David. First, he seems to have a real interest in it. There is something he enjoys about "telling the computer what to do." Even changing simple things like line color and width is impressive to him. We wrote a text program to create multiplication tables and that was exciting to him. Second, once he learns a concept, he seems to be able to extend it. So, if you teach him how to draw a line, he can then "see" what he needs to do to draw a triangle or a grid without much prompting. Each new thing we learn to do requires a little research on my part -- he is not at the point where he can look through a 300-line example program to learn how to do something (for example, how to load/paint/move sprites). But I can help him with that, and then he can apply the concept himself. It has been a lot of fun so far.

If you know of other resources for teaching children to program, I would love to hear about them. Thanks.