If you want your children to get more excited about their futures, teaching them how to code or learn a programming language is an excellent way to start. It’s easier than you think, even if you don’t know a single thing about coding or languages like Python, Scratch, Java, or HTML. You may not even know what those terms mean yourself, but you can still get them on board with the idea.
Careers in fields like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are exploding, blockchain jobs are a part of everyday life, and programming can be used to help them use their creativity productively and long-term.
If you don’t have the experience, you can learn with them. You can also be the coach leading them to the coding work that will get them excited about it. Use these 7 ways to teach your kids to code regardless of your experience level.
Show Them What Coding Is
Children of all ages today, even as young as three, know what a website is or that technology is used to do things in their everyday lives. To them, it is all they know. Show them how that stuff works, and you show them the definition of coding.
When children of any age understand what programming language is, or even just how it is used in the world, they may be more inclined to learn it on their own. Begin with the basic terms and apply them to real-world things in a way that they can understand and will want to begin applying.
Introduce Programming Languages and What They Do
Begin defining the programming languages and what they are for your children. This doesn’t need to be a long and drawn-out month-long process. This is a one-lesson plan for your children that shows them what Java is, JavaScript, Python, C++, and more.
Don’t take long here, just define these terms for them and show them they can become the biggest geniuses in the school by just starting the journey of learning those terms. There are many programs and platforms online that can help them to grasp these fundamentals.
Show Them Tech Careers
When you want your kids to be inspired by coding, use the “show them, don’t tell them” strategy. Show them the careers that are available once they get a basic mastery of these skills. You may even begin the journey by getting into programming, taking the courses with them or alongside them, and demonstrating the better life out there.
Non-fungible tokens are a fun way to get them started, where digital art is traded as currency. Get them creating, and them put them on an NFT course so they can see the immediate benefits of painting and then profiting.
How To Develop The Child’s Interest in Coding
If your child is playing games like Roblox or Minecraft, then they are already interested in coding. Online Lego, Lua, and a wide number of platforms can also help. Here are some platforms and tools that they can use to help them be interested in coding:
- Made With Code by Google: How to get from learning to a career in computer science
- MIT Media Lab Scratch Team: Here is a resource where you can teach your children to learn to code using Scratch
- Code.org: This is a learning-to-code platform that has been around since 2013 and knows how to inspire children to launch this exciting learning
- Tynker: Activities and Hour of Code games that make it fun for kids to learn
These are just a few platforms, there are many online that you can find to get them excited about doing it on their own.
Tap Into Their Competitive Side
Every kid wants to be the smartest or coolest kid at school. Show them how geeks like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started it and made it in the field of coding and technology. You can tap into their competitive side, even get them to compete with others, and then brag all about it.
Get them to show off their new mad coding skills on social media. This is something that people envy. Help them bring themselves to the top of their own game, and they will worry less about others trying to do that to them.
Teach Them Tech, They’ll Love Coding Forever
Most children intuitively want to understand how something works, just like we do. They put an app on their tablet and then wonder why it is doing this instead of this, or not doing this instead of this. Learning programming language will help them to understand what is happening there.
They can learn problem-solving and troubleshooting skills that will get them ahead of the game. They can take their in-depth knowledge of how that tech works with them for the rest of their lives. It’s a skill that will never go out of style.
Give Them Homework That Sticks
Teach your children to love coding by giving them homework that sticks. With the right tools, they can even learn how to develop their own app for the smartphone or a social media game. This is something they will want to do. Use all of the above tips and then bring them to the real-world application of it all. This could be the start of a tech career.
Launch Their Inspiration
When you are a parent, you know that there is a world out there for your children after school. They may never launch a coding career, but learning that they can might be exciting to them. And even if they don’t, they will still have skills they can bring to every job interview ever. You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to know how to inspire them. You already do.