Ask HN: How to teach a 4 year old to code?

5 points by kamphey 12 hours ago

Have you had any experience teaching a 4 year old how to code? I'm thinking about not just typing but the mindset of automation and programming. My son is in a weekly class called Kiddie Coders and they are learning directions and how to put arrows together on a sheet of paper to get someone through a series of squares.

I was thinking of putting together activities at home so he can see how to tell instructions to someone who is blind, or follow instructions like a recipe (the favorite analogy to coding seems to be cooking)

calgoo 9 hours ago

My 5 year old is playing Minecraft and watching YouTube videos. He has now started asking about the automations, switches etc. so I'm teaching him the basics of coding, but in visual minecraft.when i asked about if and else the other day and referenced the switches he understood instantly what meant.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 12 hours ago

This article covers some things, I guess

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11109739/

It highlights https://www.scratchjr.org/

  • kamphey 11 hours ago

    this part seemed interesting:

      "The experimental cohort outperforms the control group with statistical significance in comprehending potent ideational constructs encompassing representation, algorithms, and hardware/software interplay. Conversely, the control group performs better in grasping the debugging concept than their experimental counterparts. "
    But when I read further it's that the assessment had to do with a seesaw, which the control group had a literal seesaw they can use before and understand. While the experimental group was learning more abstract debugging.

    So from this I think I'll use more in-person items and building literal things that have a problem, to teach debugging. Perhaps some kind of marble run. And discuss with him what he thinks will happen (the expectation) and the difference between that and what actually happens.

sargstuff 9 hours ago

Perhaps something along lines of setting up / planning robot/activity path? aka (noted in other postings) scratch junior[0]; mblock botly dash[1]; code & go

?? program robot to fetch/push food items to bowl.

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[0] : https://www.scratchjr.org/

[1] : https://blockly.games/puzzle

bediger4000 12 hours ago

There's a few episodes of the PBS show Cyber Chase you might want to watch with your kid.

There's a toy called Turing Tumble that might be good too.