How My Kids Are Learning to Program
summary
Five- and twelve-year-olds use real tools and hit concrete milestones: they customize a Ruby Shoes app to speak spelling words, build a Scratch multiplication quiz that uses variables and if/else, and program a Bloos block robot that actually drives a square and chases people (open-source Babuinnoot + Goo board compatibility, parts ≈ $35–40). Voice-to-Logo lets the older child discover procedures loops and debugging; dictation works well for the 12‑year‑old but fails on the five‑year‑old.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Start
- 2:01Problem solvers
- 2:34Two typical approaches toward beginners
- 3:11Shoes!
- 7:23Scratch
- 8:35Poop jokes
- 8:58Dinosaurs
- 14:04Huge palette of choices
- 15:33Moving from recipes to solutions
- 15:44Open Source Bridge
- 17:01Making Robots Accessible to Everyone
- 21:44Prefab choreography
- 22:26Interaction with the environment
- 23:56Translating narrative into code
- 28:06Exploration
- 29:18Variables
- 30:04Loops
- 30:19Procedures
- 33:06Cartesian coordinates as a bonus lesson
- 36:04Why does this work?
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