First grade is looking pretty far back for this family, but here's what I did:
Big-picture foreach(child):
- Assess their personality as best I can (I was trained on this; it helped particularly to the degree that my kids aren't clones of me and prioritize different functional perspectives)
- Think about how coder/not coder outcomes might vary based on their inner personality dynamics
- Adjust expectations to meet them in the middle rather than "hey, you'll be a coder!"
Little-picture foreach(day):
- Observe their natural coding style when I can. For example, two of my kids code just by thinking, it's how they think. So they get natural coding practice by playing games, for example.
- Develop an exercise. Let's say I decide they could use some exposure to formal coding style. Maybe I'll write a program and break it, or write one and have them modify it. "This alarm program plays a bell called 'bell.wav'. Can you make it play the fart sound here, fart.wav?"
- Look at their response. Did they laugh? This helps. Did they act pressured, annoyed, bored? This is also helpful to know. I want to know where their energy is pointing, so to speak.
Specific programs I've used:
- System scripting languages like bash, ABS, Perl
- Coding games like Lightbot
- Scratch
Things I would never do, after going through all that:
- Treat coding as a skill they'll definitely need to know (I no longer believe in this and in any case, scheduling is a more likely-helpful precursor to formal coding)
- Let other coding-related techniques lose emphasis: Physical coding (improvising tools with wire; whittling tools; improvising art tools), spiritual coding (chaining socio-motivational techniques for example)
- Not ask them first what they wanna do
Just my 2c though. Hope that helps!
