Teaching a 10-year-old How to Program

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last posted Aug. 3, 2014, 10:08 p.m.
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I am teaching my 10-year old son how to program.

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Naturally, I am using Python.

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I started with Hello, World two years ago but his attention span wasn't there yet.

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He recently has been begging to learn again. I recently had seen Python for Kids so thought we'd try some fresh material, though admittedly we never gave Hello, World a chance.

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My plan is to run it as a course throughout the summer. Calling it the Altman Summer of Code. :)

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I had a Mac Book Air in my desk that I wasn't using since I upgraded to a Mac Book Pro back in December. As an added incentive to keep him interested in a long term goal (long term for a 10-year old being 3 months), if he finishes the book and "passes" my review, he will get to keep the Mac Book Air he is using to learn on.

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We are mostly going through 1 chapter of the book per week. Some weeks we might do 2 chapters, other weeks, I will augment with experience from my own career and knowledge.

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I'll plan to post insights, things that work well, and challenges in this stream. Eventually I plan to post more coherent collections of thoughts in some blog posts.

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Today we started with my introduction of what computers are, input/output, and the role of software in bringing life to otherwise dumb collections of electronic chips.

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We then went through the first 2 chapters of the book which did a great job of introducing him to operators and variables.

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The books shows examples and suggests using IDLE but we are using ipython instead.

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Just offered to let the kids stay up late for a movie. He asked to sit in dining room and play in the shell instead.

Love it!

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He has found it easier to process if I read the chapters aloud to him while he is at the computer. Maybe he is more of an auditory learner than I am. It actually was pretty cool as I was able to interject some of my own bits as we went along.

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Just peeked in and saw that he was reading chapter 3 himself. :)

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So we blazed our way through chapters 3 and 4.

Chapter 3 discussed strings, lists, "maps", and tuples.

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I was disappointed by the use of the term "map" instead of "dict". The author does make a small mention that "dict" is another name for "map" but I found it very confusing for me.

I ended up just explaining to my son that most developers use the term "dict", though both terms are correct, and we just used "dict" in our conversation.

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The string replacements, adding different items to lists, and understanding that you are adding objects to a list, including other lists, took a bit of discussion and tinkering but he "got it" in a single session, which was tested later by me quizzing him by having him do things in the shell.

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The book suggests people use IDLE and examples refer to IDLE but I have opted to have him use ipython for the shell and Sublime Text 2 for editing text when not tinkering in the shell.

He is mostly in the shell at the moment.

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Chapter 4 was short and quick but loads of fun as we played with Turtle.

It was a good break from the low level bits and he got a big thrill stringing together commands and watching things draw on the screen.

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He asked earlier today if I minded if he tried to read ahead on his own!

No, son, by all means, I told him. Chapter 5 started with the logic constructs, if/else, etc.

He read through the entire chapter himself doing the programming puzzles at the end without asking me a single question, using the shell to figure things for himself.

Love it.

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So shortly after my last post from last summer, my son lost interest in programming about as quickly as he clamoured for me to teach him.

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At first I thought it was my style as a teacher or the materials we were using. It might be one of those, but as I have observed him over the past few years, he tends to just be fickle like that. For example, he has had an on again / off again love affair with golf during that span (mostly recently not interested in the game after having an incredible round, his best ever, just a month ago).

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Now, my daughter wants me to teach her. I have been apprehensive about it though as I am concerned if I did something wrong with Ben that I might spoil it for Clare also, and I do not want that to happen.