My 7 year-old really enjoys understanding how things work and building physical things. Today I asked her if she wanted to try writing code and she lit up.
What resources, tools, services, etc do other parents recommend to help me and my daughter started?
For those who have introduced kids to programming, what resources, tools, or services would you recommend to help me and my daughter get started?
I used to volunteer with CoderDojo, a non-profit that hosted intro to coding workshops for kids of all ages (including 7-year-olds). Maybe you can find something like that local to you? I don't know if the organization still exists, but this is one of the lesson plans we used, which I think still holds up today (except the last part, you don't need jQuery anymore lol):
https://github.com/CoderDojoSV/beginner-web
I also came up with my own workshop as a follow-up, specifically about creating fun shapes with css:
https://github.com/heidid/css-art-workshop
I remember the kids also enjoyed trying out Inspect Element on existing webpages – I joked that you could pretend to change your grades to A+'s (temporarily of course), though hopefully grades are not of concern to a 7-year-old yet :)
If she is still interested once she understands what a web site really is made of, then teach some basic coding. There are plenty of resources for that, code.org being a decent one that has already broken it down into age-specific lessons.
My kids both did scratch from an early age at school maybe 6-7.
I think my son would be kind of interested in minecraft modding or creating fortnite games, better to make/do something like that that relates to their interests. If they like birds make a wildlife detector etc!
To be honest I've not got massive amount of enthusiasm for this kind of stuff but would support them if they were interested!
Different story if your kid explicitly wants to make something on a website
I wouldn't start with web development. Octostudio is going to be more fun to start with, and it's going to expose more fundamental stuff (e.g. conditionals and loops).
So sit them on your lap and spend time together.
It is not about the programming.
Good luck.
Scratch and its "block coding" ilk are one path. The good bit is that writing simple game-like things is easy: the UI stuff is very accessible.
The bad bits are that the ceiling is very low: you can only do so much before you grow past the platform; that it doesn't do anything other than simple UI games (and some turtle-ish robotics) very well; that it's very hacky -- you don't learn any good habits in Scratch; and that ultimately, you're going to have to leave "block coding" behind, and make the switch to "line coding" (as they seem to call it).
We moved from there to PyGame, which expanded the possibilities a little, but not a lot. It enables some better habits, but doesn't really encourage them.
We tried GameMaker and its myriad variants. That opened up better game creation abilities, but it's still a long way from doing anything that's "wow" compared to what they see other people doing.
We tried Roblox Studio, which was possibly the best route in terms of results for effort invested. But it's a lot of work for a kid to deal with.
Minecraft Education Edition wasn't worthwhile. We actually had more success with a mod-making tool for Java Edition that did all the code generation for the game interface based on filling out some forms in its UI. We could add Java code to extend that, but the learning curve was pretty steep. Still, adding new blocks and simple mobs was fun for a while, and easier than Roblox or full-blown Unity or whatever.
My son basically lost interest in trying to make games when he realised how much work went into making anything that he was proud to show his friends. 3D modelling, physics, music, sound effects, level design, etc, etc, all on top of the basic coding. Making something that he felt looked ok and moved ok and did something ok took a lot of work, and was nowhere near a playable game. A 2D NES-style game was about the peak of what he could do: sprites, collisions, scoring, levels .. which, tbh, he could also do in Scratch, so it wasn't really worth the effort to achieve something that was cute, but wasn't going sustain his or his friends' interest.
These days he does a bunch of HTML and CSS, and little bits of JavaScript. His interest is mostly in making web sites and publishing mostly text and some basic 2D images, and he finds that easy enough to do.
He uses GitHub to keep history (and sometimes to revert to early versions), and I set up a script that pushes the site to the server so he doesn't have to remember the command-line magic.
He found Code Camps were worthwhile: not as useful as 1-on-1 time would be, but still, a few days hacking on something with a bunch of like-minded other kids and an instructor who can answer questions -- they gave him a lot of confidence to try stuff, and to master the material, even if he wasn't really stoked with the outcomes.
