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Question Games that teach young kids how to program?

dank69

dank69

Lifer
I have two young girls (4 and 6), both showing an early predisposition towards math. Nana bought them a Cubetto last September before I could look up what it even is and tell her not to waste her money. The six year old was done with it in about 30 minutes. The four year old kinda gets it but she has trouble planning more than a few moves ahead. The major problem with Cubetto is that whether you get it or not, it gets boring very quickly. Very limited functionality and worth about 1/10th its retail price.

We take them to the local science center pretty often and I noticed they have a computer game there that is basically the exact same thing as Cubetto. This got me wondering if there are games like this available and if anyone here could recommend some?
 
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There have been several other threads about getting kids started with programming. Here are a few:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/beginners-programming-advice.2491185/
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/my-10-year-old-wants-to-learn-to-program.2338120/
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/mit-app-inventor.2382767/

But, of course, your children are younger. Every other thread I've seen was aimed at 10 and above.

The only true programming game I've ever played was Manufactoria. Its biggest problem these days is that it requires Flash. Good luck getting it to run on a modern system.

I've also played an Android game called Electron Flux, but it's more hardware-oriented. If your kids are going that direction, something like an old Radio Shack electronics kit might be a better angle to aim towards. They are oriented toward older kids, but I started playing with one around that age. 🙂

If you're looking for something more physical and robotic, that's probably Lego Technic and/or Lego Mindstorms. I never had a Nana willing to drop that much dough on a gift for me, so I don't know much about Mindstorms. 😉 But I think they are oriented toward older kids.
 
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Okay so I asked Google and came up with Tynker, Scratch (Jr.) and CodeMonkey.

I don't have an Android device bigger than a phone, so Scratch Jr. is out, for now anyway. I have Windows tablets and Android emulators have been flaky and more trouble than they are worth. I also have an old laptop I wiped and set up with Windows 10 and Microsoft family for them so they can learn their way around a computer without having to babysit them.

Going to do the 14 day trial of CodeMonkey. I like what I see so far and a subscription is half the price of Tynker.

CodeMonkey is much more advanced than Cubetto and is designed like an IDE. The first exercise is to just press Run to run the code (nice, get them used to building and running). Then a simple exercise to change the one line of code. I like that it is actual code instead of blocks or whatever, although it definitely puts it out of reach for the little one for a while.

I did the first few exercises with the 6yo and she gets it so far. There are little buttons for the keywords and I think this will be great motivation to get her typing.
 
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In Raspberry Pi you have 14 python games as standard. It is easy to change the code and see the result.....
Some programs on rosettacode.org have animation. Towers of Hanoi with animation in C is one of them. You compile it for them and learn what they can test....
Animated TOH
 
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If I may put in a plug for Logo, which got me into Basic at the age of 10, which led to a CS degree.

There was a game looooong ago known as Rocky's boots that I recall playing, but I believe it was more oriented to the lower level stuff like logic gates etc.
 
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