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Hi,
My daughter is 6 and I'm wondering if it's time to get her coding?
I'm sure I had a ZX81 when I was in primary school.
Has anyone got their kids coding this early? How?
Raspberry Pi 400?
Mick
We did some Minecraft education edition with our 6 year old in lockdown. There are a few sample lessons for free.
Scratch jnr a good starting point.
Yep, start with Scratch, move onto Python when ready.
I downloaded Tynker for the boy as they used it at school but it's fairly limited unless you pay for it.
My 6 year old has this, it's pretty good fun and easy to get started.
https://kano.me/uk/store/products/disney-frozen-2-coding-kit
Basically you drag and drop puzzle pieces which are really simple loops, if statements, etc into a programme.
The hardware is just a bunch of proximity sensors connected by bluetooth to the phone/pc but you can use it for controlling the programmes you make e.g. making icicles form based on how high your hand is or making leaves blow around in scenes (vaguely) reminiscent of the frozen movies.
We bought or then 6 yr old a Raspberry Pi 3 with the Kano educatinal OS when they were on sale for £65 last year (Pi 3 + keyboard/mouse + power supply + Kano OS)
It's got loads of coding games and activities built in, and she's absolutely flying with some of it. In fact I've kind of left her to it, and she's done a lot on her own.
She's really into the Hackable Minecraft that is included with it - you can program shapes, buildings, etc. using a drag and drop coding language similar to Scratch, and also Python.
We've now also bought a Pi 400 for general household use, but also we'll be doing some more advanced coding as she progresses. Loads of downloadable stuff for the Pi.
code.org is great, has scratch-like blocks that you can drag into position to create algorotihms to solve the minecraft or frozen themed puzzles.
I listened to a podcast about cs-unplugged which sounds great. Basically it allows you to tech Computer Science away from a computer:
https://csunplugged.org/en/ (I think this was the podcast https://changelog.com/podcast/302)
Programmer here - just wondering why? Seems very young. I would take a look at processing if you are really set on it, much more creative. Personally my 6 year is hooked on chess, think this has a huge benefit and a lot more fun.
We had lot of fun with the Lego robot kit.