Coding isn’t just learning computer programming. Coding is for a bright future. Coding for life skills. Coding is for everyone. At Codeverse, we specialize in making coding fun!
Since our children were born, we’ve worked to give them the best of everything that life has to offer. One of the best ways to empower our children is giving them the skills to be creators, rather than consumers, in today’s digital landscape. Learning to code provides our kids with both the technical and non-technical skills they need to thrive in this new medium.
Coding can help your children develop so many skills, but it can do even more for them. Let’s explore what coding is, why they should learn to code, and the benefits that await your child as they experience coding for themselves.
Coding is simply giving a computer directions or instructions in a language it can understand. If someone wanted you to do something, the easiest way to explain it to you and get you to do it would be to talk to you in the language you speak and give you clear instructions, right?
A computer might be a machine, but the concept is the same. Coding takes a programming language, structures it in syntax, and the computer gets the message and performs the task. Think about it, programmers worldwide code smartphones, tablets, interfaces, computers, and more that we use every day using programming languages.
Now, what if I told you that the child that you prepared lunch for and helped them properly wash their hair and brush their teeth can learn how to code right now at their current age and stage of development? It’s true. You’re never too old to learn to code, and you’re just about never too young either.
Introducing code is exciting, and watching it unlock a whole world for a child is amazing. Teachers the world over can tell you that seeing the lightbulb of understanding on a child’s face is one of the best feelings in the world. Teaching a child to code combines that feeling with the knowledge that you may be opening educational opportunities and career options up to them that they could never have imagined possible before.
Kids should learn to code because it provides them a framework for thinking, creating, and collaborating that can help them explore and share their ideas with the world. When children begin to play games and exist in an active learning environment, they’re learning coding concepts that can provide valuable skills for the future like problem-solving, resilience, and computational thinking.
Not only will learning to code help children collaborate better with others, but coding also provides a creative outlet for children to explore their unique understanding of the world.
Our kids have had more screen time in their lives than any generation before them. This is just an inevitability due to the availability of technology. With no sign of slowing down, it’s natural and healthy for kids to want to know more about the world around them, and that now includes how computers work.
By the time children reach the age of 6, they’re ready to start learning to code. Kids learn basic concepts like algorithms, sequencing, loops, decomposition, branching, and even debugging as early as kindergarten. The concepts are hidden in the fun games they play like ordering activity cards, shouting out their morning routines, playing duck-duck-goose, and more.
Their minds are competent and ready to learn the concepts, and they do. So when they’ve learned to read, the next step is to get them in front of a screen with the right programming program and let them explore coding.
If you’re not sure whether you should embrace the future and what coding can do for your child, let’s explore the benefits.
Coding offers a variety of benefits to anyone who is thinking about learning to code. For people looking at it as an opportunity for their children, it’s not too late to make it an opportunity for yourself too. But, as it relates to kids, there are benefits for today and benefits for the future as well.
One of the core concepts of coding is to identify a problem. Sometimes this means finding an error. That requires a certain attention to detail, but by and large, kids are great at telling you what went wrong and where.
Additionally, though, coding itself is problem-solving. If you want a computer to perform a certain task, you have first identified the problem that the computer isn’t already completing the task. In order to complete any task, there are often multiple steps along the way, and problem-solving skills develop as you identify all the steps you need to take to achieve the desired result.
There’s no denying that there will be mistakes and errors in coding on occasion as in life. Things won’t always go the way that we planned. Kids who code learn that mistakes and errors happen, but that’s not the time to give up. That’s the time to debug the situation. Find the error, find the missing step, and solve the problem. There’s absolutely no reason to give up in coding — only reasons to try again.
After a problem has been identified and a solution planned, it becomes necessary to break the steps of your solution down into smaller and smaller steps to know how to get from where you started to where you want to be. This thinking process is called computational thinking.
It’s essential to coding, but its life applications are invaluable as well. Computational thinking can help your child address problems as they arise in real life and break down the solutions into manageable steps to succeed.
There’s an awful lot of logic, math, and science that go into coding, but coding has the heart of a poet. In application, coding is a creative outlet that can take computations and turn them into art. If you haven’t seen some of the more popular video games on the market, it’s hard not to call the graphics in those games pure art.
Those video games and their art are born from code. Robots that can talk and seemingly interact with us; that’s the art that comes from code. Your child may not start off making a fire-breathing robot, but that doesn’t mean they won’t create art.
Our children have a vibrant technological world to explore. They have the physical tools to bring about exciting new changes in the future, but we need to cultivate our kids’ creativity to set them up for success. It’s only through creativity and innovative thinking that the next generation can take this opportunity they’ve been given and develop new ways to use this technology to benefit society as a whole.
Coding is a skill set that will be increasingly valuable as we continue to use computers, smartphones, tablets, and more. Understanding how this part of our world works is also an important part of many concepts in other areas of technology and engineering.
Kids who code gain an appreciation and fondness for math. They just do. That’s because coding is the language of math. So, if you could keep your child from ever hating math, wouldn’t you? As Cady Heron says in Mean Girls, “I like math because it’s the same in every country.” And Damien is right. That’s beautiful. Loving math can take you a lot farther than hating it can, and math skills improve other skills like organizing and data analysis.
Coding is fun. For most kids, the first time they write a piece of code that finally manipulates the screen in front of them, they’re hooked, and they are learning a new way to have fun. Meanwhile, the fun they’re having is also teaching them. They’re learning new skills without even realizing it.
Teaching our kids without them realizing that they’re learning is just as satisfying as watching them eat an entire serving of that vegetable they “hate” because they can’t tell you to put it in the dish. Muahaha. Parenting win!
Coding is a great way to set your children up for success in life. In all honesty, every child should learn to code. With the amount of technology we live with and use on a daily basis and from such a young age, there’s literally no reason that children shouldn’t be learning to code.
We have an opportunity to help them explore their world while teaching them problem-solving skills, how to pay attention to details, how to think through a situation, organizational skills, analyzing skills, writing, math, and so much more. Not to mention it’s fun and a way for them to get their creative juices flowing.
Lastly, we don’t expect our children to think about their futures, but we do think about their futures a lot. Coding has our back there too. Coding prepares our little ones to be whatever they want to be in life. Getting an early start on learning to code can open the door for educational opportunities and future job opportunities.
How often can you say that the fun your child has today could give them the confidence and skills to become a creator of technology, rather than just a consumer? That’s what coding can do for your child.
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