5 ways to make Coding a part of your Child's Hobby

Coding has become the basic technological literacy, similar to reading and writing. Hence, it's necessary that your children get introduced to coding at an early age. But it's also equally necessary that you present this subject in a manner that's interesting from the point of view of children, thereby making the child comfortable in going back to programming again and again. There are various ways to do that. Some creative ideas are mentioned below.

Make your children see the creativity that they can unleash through coding
Children love to create. They like to build things from scratch. Take the example of the building blocks that children find very engaging. They build certain structures from these blocks as per the designs provided in the manual that comes with the set. They sometimes improvise as well. Now, that innovative improvisation is more beautiful. Coding is essentially an innovative process. It's essential that you build this connection between creativity and coding. It should be seen that the child is not taught coding in the form of just another subject that one needs to “study hard”. Instead, the child should get the exposure to fun and innovative ways of implementing his code. He should be able to experience that “I wonder what'll happen next!” moment. Then, the excited child will find ways to create, code and play with code.

Allow your children to code in groups
Group study is a great way to break the monotony. It makes the child learn quickly and also enables him to get a different perspective on the subject matter. By studying alone, he/she will view the subject from his/her own perspective only. But in group studies, he will get different view-points for a thorough learning experience. The child will get motivated to perform better and hence will strive for excellence. “If he can do this code, why can't I?” is something he'll ask himself again and again.

Don't introduce the technical details of computer science behind each program
Parents generally have a tendency to share the technical details of every code with a child, especially if they are software developers or have an IT-background. Now, you may feel that this may help your children pick up the pace in their coding knowledge but frankly, it's generally the opposite. If you are introduced to the knowledge of, say, recursion at such an early age you might lose your interest because the mind is technically not developed enough to grasp that matter. Certain topics like the following should be left out:

• Recursion
• Designing
• OOP (Object-Oriented Programming)
• Data structures like stack, queue, link-list
• SQL (Structured Query Language)

-etc.A simple thumb-rule can be observed. If you find a question suitable for a job interview in the field of technology, it's better to skip that.

Get your child a Kano
There's a computer kit called Kano which is perfectly suitable for children to embrace the maker culture. This kit is suitable for all ages. Children love to build and work with their parents. When I was a child, I used to put together jigsaw puzzles with my father. I used to love that. Now let's travel forward through time to today. The toys have become digital. Kano seems to be the best digital toy to work with your child on building something new from the digitality point of view. An instruction manual comes with the kit which is quite good, informative and helpful. Your child will gain a hands-on experience with the hardware of the computer through the hardware assembly process. Once the assembling part is done, there are a number of educational programs that can be worked on the same platform. This will increase your child's experience and interest in software.

Introduce SCRATCH (developed specifically to teach children coding by MIT) to your children
SCRATCH was made by MIT specifically for the children. The concepts of programming are introduced to children in a graphical Lego-like environment. Through games and modification of the in-game codes as per your child's preference, he/she will not even realize the fact that he/she is actually learning coding. One important thing that you should keep in mind is the fact that programming is very much typing-oriented. A small error is enough to cause you a massive amount of headache in debugging the same program. Scratch has the option of dragging and dropping “code snippets” through mouse which is immensely beneficial. There's a course at Futurite called “FIRST STEPS- CODING FUN WITH SCRATCH” which is specifically made for children for a fun and effective way of introducing coding to children.

Coding has become a compulsory subject in the curriculum of many leading schools around the globe as per various newspaper reports like 'the guardian', 'The Telegraph' etc. The benefits of coding are endless. Steve Jobs said, “I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.”

It's necessary that your child is introduced to coding at an early age. You can go through the detailed reasons here. You should also remember that it is the basic form of technological literacy in this digital-oriented world and hence, carries utmost importance in shaping your child's career.