One of the most enriching experiences of being a human is to create something new. Coding is one such important opportunity for children today – an opportunity to create, explore, and solve problems. Getting kids into coding as early as possible will help them in their growing years; coding involves both the left brain and the right brain activity, which reaps a lot of benefits in the long run.
Coding is fundamentally nothing but creativity and problem-solving. These are traits that should be inculcated at a very young age in every kid. Yes, we do teach other subjects to achieve the same goal. But no other subject actually has the power to inculcate creativity and problem-solving with an immediate output than coding. Coding brings together logic, problem-solving, mathematics, design, creativity, and language to a singular application. Best of all, coding also teaches kids to brainstorm on problems and that it is okay if you don’t get things right the first time.
Here is a list of skills that children develop while learning coding:
- To apply mathematics and logic in real-life problems
- To learn to create things and to solve difficult problems
- To persist, iterate and improve
- Algorithmic thinking
- Critical thinking
- Attention to detail and debugging the problem to find a solution
- Creativity and Expression
- Iterative problem-solving
How do you start your child on coding?
Most parents would have a confusion on how to start their kids on coding and whether to start with Scratch or Python or JavaScript. At UnicMinds we simplified it completely.
Firstly, the younger kids will need to be introduced to drag and drop, block based, UI-based coding first. The drag-and-drop interface teaches kids the principles of construction, flow, variables, and to think in a logical sequence to solve problems.
As they get comfortable with basic coding blocks, start with a simple programming language like JavaScript or Python. Both these are very good introductory languages. Python is especially good because it is one language that is used extensively everywhere by industry and academicians. Students will build their own games such as Alien Invasion, Adventure Quest and will have lots of fun while learning the skills.
In the next phase, students graduate to a higher level beginning with a strongly typed language like C++ and start the process of working with data structures.
At UnicMinds, we have a tailor-made path for each student based on their individual stage of learning and learning type. We have the most comprehensive range of coding courses for kids with a clear path from beginner to advanced levels.
Earlier, many programming languages were terminal-based and complex syntax oriented. Today, with the advent of simpler programming languages like Python and block-based coding, children can learn crucial logic-based programming by leaving the heavy-duty not so immediately relevant stuff such as syntax. This is like learning coding in an optimised way than how people used to learn 20 years back.
We live in an age where technology plays a role in everything that we do, and the future is going to be more and more of it. Therefore, most countries have a mandate to include coding for kids, and it is deemed an absolute mandatory course for the development of kids across schools in the developed and the developing world as part of the STEM.
Don’t think anymore, enrol your kids in the best 1:1 coding class.
