I am big believer that we should be training our children for the future. One way that I am trying to prepare my son is buy encouraging him to want to learn programing. In today's world, programming is a great skill to have and anything we can do to help our kids want to learn this skill is a huge asset.
Some time ago, I downloaded a program called Alice and tried to encourage my son to learn a little programming. Alice was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in an effort to provide educational programming software for students.
Today I came across a new resource. www.crunchzilla.com is a web based programming educational tool. It has a kids version www.crunchzilla.com/code-monster and a teenager/adult version www.crunchzilla.com/code-maven.
While my son has enjoyed playing with Alice, it's probably better suited for pre-teens to teenagers (my son is currently 7). When we went to Code Monster he had a great time playing with the coding. He enjoyed the immediate response of changing the size, position, and color of the shapes he was guided to create. (I loved playing with it too after he went to bed)
Lesson Learned: There are many great tools available to teach our kids the skills they need to thrive. Use them.
Some time ago, I downloaded a program called Alice and tried to encourage my son to learn a little programming. Alice was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in an effort to provide educational programming software for students.
Today I came across a new resource. www.crunchzilla.com is a web based programming educational tool. It has a kids version www.crunchzilla.com/code-monster and a teenager/adult version www.crunchzilla.com/code-maven.
While my son has enjoyed playing with Alice, it's probably better suited for pre-teens to teenagers (my son is currently 7). When we went to Code Monster he had a great time playing with the coding. He enjoyed the immediate response of changing the size, position, and color of the shapes he was guided to create. (I loved playing with it too after he went to bed)
Lesson Learned: There are many great tools available to teach our kids the skills they need to thrive. Use them.