Once upon a time, before I was a mom, I was a computer programmer.  I enjoyed programming – either writing them from scratch or modifying existing ones.  I liked taking the requirements and turning them into a program that would actually run!  Fast forward nine years and I have a seven-year-old who would love to write a Wizard 202 game (ala Wizard 101) except that in his game everything would be free (at least for family members).  So, I’ve been searching for a way to teach him about programming and trying to explain that he would have to start with something simple.

When I was in middle school, we had computer lab where we learned Logo.  Lo and behold, it’s still out there.  I toyed with buying the program offered here, but I’m too cheap.  I want free.  So, I continued searching. I found Light Bot.  My son really likes it.  The game does get progressively hard so he usually just does the first three or four levels, but it explains basic programming concepts.

Then, just today I learned that this is Computer Science Education Week and there’s a website with all different options for teaching kids to code (be sure to check out the Beyond One Hour tab).

I also recently discovered this website with a Scratch editor.  My nine-year-old tried out Scratch and thought it was pretty neat (I’m sure it had more to do with the cat than anything else!).

So, lots of options and now I just need to turn it into a “course” to teach my older two kids some basic programming (and maybe I can learn a thing or two about coding apps).

What about you?  Do/Did you program?  Do your kids program?  Do you use a curriculum?