[Akshay6988]

Call me orthodox or not moving with time or whatever but I feel, the lesser the screen time for kids, the better ! That is nearly impossible now a days given distance learning and what not. But coding for kids as young as 6 to 10 years !? What's the need ? It's not some PhD or something that takes years of preparation, research. Will that child be able to form logic at such a young age ? Also all these new ed techs are nothing but a sham. When I was in school, those IIT , NEET coachings were a fad, forcing thousands of parents to get their kids admitted to these institutions, it's just like that - only now it's online. To each his own I guess, but just wanted to rant out about this topic. No offense meant to OP and anyone.

[greyhound82]

My suggestion is to introduce computational thinking rather than any specific programming language. The kid will eventually select his favourite programming language. For a quick reference try out the below site . This is an European Union funded non profit project and materials are free

http://www.taccle3.eu/english/

[DonHyd]

Originally Posted by windrider

Seriously, you could learn all of that and more for free on Youtube. There are a lot of reputed channels with millions of subscribers offering detailed classes on Youtube.

Couldn't agree more. In fact, looking at the content of some YouTube channels, I just wondered why they were offering all of that for free. Whitehat Jr is simply not worth the money.

[three10]

Please do take a look at the no starch press collection for kids here.

https://nostarch.com/catalog/kids

Affordable (and very good quality of content) e books.

[Guite]

I had my son complete two courses in WhitehatJr. For the third course the number of courses were substantial, so was the cost. So I made two requests:
1. Allow me (my son) to take up this course in batches, and we pay in batches. The refused this.
2. Send me list of topics to be covered in each class (one class of one hour per day). They refused this initially. I gave them analogy of always seeing the product you intend to buy. Even in case of paying for a service, we usually have a fair idea of what we are paying for, before we complete the transaction. In case of WhitehatJr, they expect us to pay blindly.

Ultimately they sent the topic list. I reviewed it and decided not to proceed.

[GKR9900]

Now I'm not an expert on the field but there is this one YouTube channel - Paul McWhorter - that really has got some great tutorials regarding coding and robotics. Sharing the link here.
https://youtube.com/c/mcwhorpj

[Tucker48]

Mostly a worthless opinion and slightly OT.

Coding is another name of language. Learning coding is like learning a new language. Logic is all what matters. Without logic coding is useless. Activities which enhance the logical capabilities of the kid is the best way to go and these activities don't necessarily include learning to code.

[NavtejS]

Originally Posted by windrider

. He is a child and should spend his vacations playing outside or doing something fun rather than spend his time looking into a screen. I spent my vacations taking swimming lessons, playing cricket/football with the neighborhood kids and watching cartoon network(during the era they used to have great shows like swat cats, courage the cowardly dog etc not the BS they are showing nowadays) and I am glad I did. If he really is interested in programming, he can easily learn it when he is older. Don't let him waste his vacations sitting indoors and staring in to screen

This is absolutely true. Things have changed . Toys have been replaced by iphones and laptops. I remember those noons spent in the sun and the ice creams later. Would love to revisit them.

His whole life is there to spend time on screen. Don't go with trend. It is a dangerous one.

[ganesc]

My daughters school uses scratch if I recall correctly. https://scratch.mit.edu/, do try this as I found this a lot interactive.

For Tamil based learning, I heard decent feedbacks on LMES. I personally have no experience using their courses or workshops though.

https://labs.chitti.app/courses/ or https://lmes.in

Will be closely following this space .

[thebengalee]

As someone who is in the process of building a platform for STEM education for kids, let me share my two cents.

Originally Posted by windrider

To be honest, I see White Hat Jr as a scam. This is a cash grab preying on the greed/dream of parents/kids that he/she will become the next Zuckerberg

Totally agree with windrider here; Byju and their likes are extremely predatory and from what insiders have told me, they formulate an opinion of how much a person can pay (by looking at stuff like what shampoos and soaps they use, condition of their house, etc.) and try to milk as much money out of them as possible. Stay away.

Originally Posted by Akshay6988

Call me orthodox or not moving with time or whatever but I feel, the lesser the screen time for kids, the better ! That is nearly impossible now a days given distance learning and what not. But coding for kids as young as 6 to 10 years !? What's the need ?

Completely agree with Akshay6988 as well. Some parents feel like the only way their kid can "make it" in life is to get into IIT or something similar. This one-dimensional opinion of comprises "excellence" in life is extremely damaging to their mental health. Kids are natural learners, if given the environment and the resources, they will learn more than any school can ever provide. They need the space and the flexibility to have a wide variety of experiences, and putting them on a lane where you can only do "science" or only do "medicine" destroys lives.

Originally Posted by Tucker48

Mostly a worthless opinion and slightly OT.
Coding is another name of language. Learning coding is like learning a new language. Logic is all what matters. Without logic coding is useless. Activities which enhance the logical capabilities of the kid is the best way to go and these activities don't necessarily include learning to code.

This is the root of the issue here. If you want to teach your kid anything, make it critical thinking. The rest will follow.

Originally Posted by Oxy

Now that his school is going to wind up in a couple of days, and the next academic year is only going to begin in June, my son has started pestering me to get him enrolled in an instructor led coding or robotics course. He does not want Udemy/Coursera sessions.

Coding, robotics, IoT: these are buzzwords. Resist the urge to give in to peer pressure and ask your child why does he want to do these courses. Does the subject really interest him? Where did he come across this, was it word of mouth or was it an advertisement on YouTube?

As a parent, the best you can do is clear the clutter and help him make a right decision. There is no decent mainstream course or product in the market at this point in that I can wholeheartedly recommend. I'm sure there are good people doing good work in this field, but finding them is going to be difficult You will need to get your hands dirty and do a ton of work for your son in the ways of finding good YouTube tutorials (there's a lot of really useless stuff floating around) and helping him when he gets stuck or can't figure out what to do. If you feel you are not qualified enough for this, find someone working in the software industry whom you can trust and ask them to spare a few weekends teaching you the basics.

And my personal opinion for what it's worth: your son is 10. Buy him a set of Legos, see if he takes to that. Buy him some cheap toys from your local market and ask him to take it apart and put it back together in working order. Start small and build up from there.

Originally Posted by ganesc

My daughters school uses scratch if I recall correctly. https://scratch.mit.edu/, do try this as I found this a lot interactive.

If your son is genuinely interested in programming, look into Scratch. It is designed to be graphical instead of "random lines of text" and is widely recommended as a stepping stone to learning how to code for extreme beginners.

I can keep on writing about this topic because this is very close to my heart. Please feel free ask if you have any further questions.

Edit: adding two of my favourite videos on education here by Ken Robinson.

Do schools kill creativity?

How to escape education's death valley

[curious.yash]

Please don't put burden on your child. Learning to code and robotics at a small age is stupidity. A child does not know what he/she wants to do after growing-up and you are just killing their independence of picking their own career.This leads to mental pressure and depression from a very small age.

It's stupidity to enroll in a course just because other children have already enrolled.I have been working in an IT industry for a long time and I'm doing really good there. I have also worked on Arduino,Raspberry PI, Linkit Smart etc embedded boards for robotics as a hobiest.I didn't start coding at the age of 10 and my parents gave me independence to choose my career. I was more technically inclined so I choose the IT.

If I can learn all these things in my engineering days and do good in my career then why can't your child can learn.What is the need to put such burden on his mind?

Childhood is for playing and enjoyment.Just make sure you child is doing good in the academics.If you feel that a extra curriculam activity is required,then ask you child what he/she wants to do and let the child explore the possibilities of the same.

Just ask yourself, Where you more happy and stress-free in childhood or in adulthood? If
its childhood,then please don't kill you child's best time of the life.

[NarulaAJ]

Hi,
Firstly I would say coding at such a young age would not be wise in my opinion.
Secondly, if anyone is wanting to learn coding, I highly suggest you go for a Stanford free course on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/KkMDCCdjyW8

Not only is it a good course on programming, but the teacher is no less than a comedian. Mehran Sahami is the teacher. I've probably seen every lecture in that course twice just for fun (being quite the nerd). He explains everything from scratch. Heck he mentions the only prerequisite for his class is that you know how to recognize if your computer is on or not!
All course materials are available on Stanford websites mentioned in lecture descriptions.

But, but. Again. Please do not burden the child. Only let him/her explore if he/she really wants to learn more in computers.

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by subraiyr

Same here...My son, 10 years old, wants to learn to code. The point is that his besties are learning to code and he wants to join them. Looking for potential classes if any which he can enroll in.

He is musically inclined and has joined Piano lessons (Western from Trinity School of Music) and is learning Carnatic from a music teacher based in Kerala. I don't want to put too much pressure on him, but with the summer vacations coming in, I think 1 more class is just fine. In addition, he will do swimming and maybe another sport as well. Currently, a couple of seniors are teaching basketball to the kids in the apartment twice a week

I think his interests are much richer from a creativity and intelligence perspective than just coding. Let him not join the flock of sheep.

[Cliff9091]

Originally Posted by Oxy

He is 10.

Hey Oxy

I'm a student myself, with two years of sitting at home and attending lectures online was very boring and also mentally draining, Its better to avoid screen time and go and do something physically like pick up a sport or learn a instrument, I yearn to be a 10 year old again when there were no responsibilities, expectations and strings attached, its better to do this when he is in his teens and when he shows interest in the subject of coding.

This is just my 2 cents, you're his father and I'm sure you'll know the the best for your son

Cheers
Cliff

[BhayanaV]

Originally Posted by windrider

To be honest, I see White Hat Jr as a scam. This is a cash grab preying on the greed/dream of parents/kids that he/she will become the next Zuckerberg. If he really is interested in programming, he can easily learn it when he is older. Don't let him waste his vacations sitting indoors and staring in to screen

White Hat Jr has made enough money already and now they are targeting non-metros as well. I know tons of people who made their kids do it. We should let kids explore what is their passion and choose. But avoid pushing them for such classes just because everyone else is doing it.