shanezomom Posted February 12, 2013 Share Posted February 12, 2013 11 yr ds wants to begin to learn programming. Any updates on what's working for you and your kids these days? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freerange Posted February 12, 2013 Share Posted February 12, 2013 Game Maker's Apprentice by Dr Jacob Habgood Playing around with Scratch, which is free & intuitive to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daijobu Posted February 13, 2013 Share Posted February 13, 2013 If he wants to learn Python, we have had good success with the following books: Python for the Absolute Beginner by Michael Dawson and Hello World: Computer Programming for Kids and other beginners by Warren Sande Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunnyDays Posted February 13, 2013 Share Posted February 13, 2013 Yes, Scratch is always a good place to start: http://www.scratch.mit.edu/ Kid Coder/Teen Coder programs are good as well: http://www.homeschoolprogramming.com/index.php My DS has learned Scratch fairly well and does a lot of projects with it. He is working through Kid Coder Windows Programming (Visual Basic) now and likes it as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dereksurfs Posted February 13, 2013 Share Posted February 13, 2013 I highly recommend Game Maker's Apprentice which we did when ds11 was 10. This is copied from another thread in which I answered the same basic question: I'm teaching my son to program in Java currently. There are many great resources available from free to reasonably priced. Computer Science like many of the sciences is best learned by interacting with it, hence the lab portion (programming). Python and Java are really popular programming languages to start with, though Java is more powerful. In the beginning simply learning logic flow and patterns are a great place to start. Seeing how the pieces fit together is very helpful. That is why programs like Scratch and Game Maker are taking off as educational tools. Game Maker's Apprentice is the first book I started my son with when he was 10. He finished the book and built all the games using the Game Maker tool. Next we did this very practical tutorial series which I recommend your son trying. Its entitled Java for the Absolute Beginner: After that we went on to this fantastic free educational tool called Greenfoot. This is a powerful tool for both teaching programming fundamentals and making some cool games. It's used by quite a few college and university CS departments in teaching programming. Java is used: http://www.greenfoot.org/overview http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/mik/category/joy-of-code/page/2/ There are too many beginning programming courses and additional tutorials available to list. But here are a few more: http://www.artofprob...rse_id=cs:intro http://www.khanacade...omputer-science http://see.stanford....aa-866adcae1111 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 Another vote for Kid Coder. DS12 is enjoying it, and I think that it does a good job introducing the vocabulary and concepts that he will need for further programming studies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
letsplaymath Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 My daughter has been really enjoying this free-download book: Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python She's almost finished the first volume and is anxious for me to print out the second... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilaclady Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Scratch is a good language to start with and then Alice and python. Dd1 started with scratch, it is available free online and she is now doing Alice, we haven't spent as much time as I will like but she will be dong more over summer. I was able to get a basic book on amazon for $ 0.5 so it is easy to start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovemykids Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Has anyone tried Game Design 1? I am considering it for 9 yr old ds..thoughts? He has played around with Scratch and Alice… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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