Kids have compassionate personalities. They don't like doing anything that doesn't please them, so it becomes essential for us as their parents/guardians to help them develop interests in things that are beneficial for them. Learn about the most important steps to help your child get started with programming.

As far as coding is concerned, there are ample of ways by which a kid will definitely get inclined towards coding the best of them being Robots and Games. Program controlled bots are versatile and are used in the auto sector, in the healthcare sector, in astronomy, agricultural industry, and a lot more, whereas games are the best suitable medium along with drawings and animations that are eye-catchy and instantly seem interesting.

STEP 2: UNDERSTANDING KIDS’ PSYCHOLOGY

For our efforts to be fruitful and efficient, we need to understand what’s going on behind that little mind of our kids'. We can start by teaching them coding basics and make them develop interest. Once that happens, they will become more and more curious, which will push them further, and they will start putting their efforts. Because kids have flexible minds, they can be easily molded towards a specific goal provided we use the correct means. Also, it is a scientifically proven fact that kids are quick learners in comparison to teenagers and adults, so they will grab skills sooner.

STEP 3: ACTIVITY-BASED LEARNING

Activity-based learning to date serves as the most efficient way of learning. Because we use practical measures to teach kids, it seems more realistic and fun for them to learn. Activities are more and more being included in the school curriculums solely because they have a more significant impact on kids' learning and develop their skills and abilities faster.  Through activities, children find it easier to understand and follow and make use of their brains in the best possible ways, as shown in many studies lately.

STEP 4: TEACHING DRAG AND DROP LANGUAGES

Now the actual teaching part starts, so to begin with, drag and drop languages have proved to be the most effective programming languages to teach kids with. Drag and drop tools are simple to use and very interesting from the kids' aspect. The most famous Scratch and Blockly while Code.org, Touch develop, and beetle blocks are among others. Once the student gets a hold of these, he/she can easily be directed towards using high-level programming languages like JavaScript, Ruby, etc.

STEP 5: PLAY-WAY LEARNING

If you could play and learn at the same time, what more could one possibly ask for? The sole objective kids have is playing, and wouldn't it be fun if they could learn this way as well? What we can do is make the programming sessions fun and interactive for them. A simple example, your kid is climbing upstairs; you could teach them counting say the first five digits; so count the steps together with them as they climb. Move back and forth so that they remember the numbers from both the orders. Similarly, there are many more ways that you can come up with, which will be different from the traditional textbook teaching way.

STEP 6: OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

Observation is a critical skill that is required in life. You have to be a patient observer to get a better understanding of things. Kids learn from what they see, and so do we. Our surroundings influence kids the most. For example, we often tell our kids not to do something, but we don't realize that we might be doing the same thing. This, if noticed by kids, will create a sense of retaliation in them. So what you teach, make sure we don't do it yourselves.

STEP 7: DEVELOPING RAPPORT WITH KIDS

We often don’t pay a lot of attention to our kids in terms of their personal lives and the people they have around. It's important for us to be a significant part of their lives not with the intention of spying, but to be comfortable with them and keeping the communication as an elder and family intact.  This helps the kids because they share their thoughts, experiences, ideas, and what all has been happening so that we guide them in the best possible way.

STEP 8: LEVELING UP WITH KIDS

Once we understand how they feel, we can plan accordingly for the best suitable course for them. Different age groups' suited courses are available by many excellent institutions.

STEP 9: PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

We can make it simpler by making them friendly with computers and comparing the human world to the virtual world. When we communicate in our daily lives, we use our native languages, and maybe others too. Take this as an example that in the same way, we need a language to communicate with computers also. In human lives, we either use our native languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, etc. or maybe some other like English, German, Spanish, etc., in the virtual world we need tech languages like JavaScript, HTML, Python, Ruby, etc.

STEP 10: VISUALIZATION AND IMAGINATION

Programming is a matter of creativity, and for that, you need imagination. Visualization and imagination help in setting up goals and taking the appropriate steps towards the fulfillment of these goals. 

STEP 11: TEAMWORK (INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS)

Teamwork is of the utmost importance when it comes to programming because you have a team comprising of many people who work together to complete the real-life projects.  "The more, the merrier," hence the output as a team, turns out to be more productive. Also, teamwork (Interpersonal Relationships) is one of the basic 12 life skills that we must have. Schools these days also have a lot of group projects to promote teamwork between the students from an early age.

STEP 12: WEBSITES

There are many websites and online coding resources that are meant for kids like CodeCombat, Code.org, Code Avengers, Code monsters, etc. that teach programming languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. effectively and quickly.

STEP 13: WORDS OF WISDOM

Words have the most power in comparison to anything. What we might not be able to do physically, we could do it just by using a few but impactful words. Positive words reflect positive behavior and vice-versa. So all you need to do is throw some words of wisdom inside your kids' brain, and that is all it takes.

Book a FREE online Coding Class for Kids to learn more about most-in demand programming skills.
 
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