[Tutor] Teaching an 8-year-old programming.

[boB Stepp]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Devin Jeanpierre
<jeanpierreda at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've heard remarkable things about http://www.programbydesign.org/ ,
> but it's aimed at students a little older. Its design might help you;
> although, it also probably depends on motivation / what you want to
> teach.
>
> Anyway, that's the best I can offer. Good luck! It sounds like you're
> in for a fun time. :)
>
> -- Devin

Thanks for the link. It looks interesting, but I'm not sure it is the
way to go currently for my son. However, it gives me some ideas for my
wife's class, which covers 7th through 9th grades in a single
classroom.

There seem to be many, ... , many thoughts on how to best teach
programming to kids!

I am currently thinking about "Invent Your Own Computer Games with
Python" by Al Sweigart. His thought is to give kids complete, workable
code for a real game and let them fool around with it. This might
work! I did something similar starting out with my son using QBASIC,
giving him a brief program that played music. He seemed to have quite
a lot of fun fooling around with different permutations of the
commands. Later, when I introduced him to some new commands, like
generating random numbers, he combined a number guessing game with his
self-composed musical theme.

Has anyone experience using this book?

-- 
Cheers!
boB