Computer Language EL?

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

So obviously I don’t see myself teaching my 2 or 3 year old (let alone my 5 month old) computer language, but I believe we have one or two technologically savvy dads here in the forum. I am interested to know when would be a good time to bring about this subject. I think understanding computer language is going to be very important. Let it be noted I don’t even know where to begin as I have very faint memories of html in my high school class (I sadly avoided all computer classes in college).

What basic concepts does a child need to grasp before entering into computer languages? What tools does a child need anyway in the future of computers? I realize a lot will change in the next five years but surely there has to be a good place to start sooner rather than later.

Thanks

2

Here’s my 2 cents: (but I only make people angry on this forum, so do take what I say with a pinch of salt.)

  1. If your child has his numbers and quantities down, you can teach binary and hexadecimal numbers, I’m thinking as early as 2 years old.

  2. Computer languages change much faster than Math, so I’ll be teaching logic, I have no clue when I’ll start, but as soon as my little one can understand concepts like “if you sit still, you’ll get a sweetie” that would be my green light.

  3. When I was in school everyone was saying “oh, Pascal is old, we’ll never use it, why learn it.” But later when I was learning more modern languages like C# and VB.net, I was grateful for my exposure to Pascal earlier in life. If you want to teach a basic language, my favourite would be C/C++. If your child has a bit of logic, reading and numbers down, I think you can start.

  4. We love to build things, we’ll be using Lego Mindstorms to teach programing, logic and robotics.

I’m a mathamatition and use to work as a Software Enginere before I became a full time mom, it’s not just dads who know about computers.

3

Shame on me! I forget how SUPER all you super moms are in this forum! :laugh: You are inspiring! Thanks for the ideas!

4

:confused: I am just going to embrace my shame and expose my lack of intelligence. Where would be a good place to start to teach myself logic and computer language? I prefer a free or very cheap route as we are on the lower end of the poverty scale (I am trying to change that for my kids through knowledge and hardwork). Thanks Super Moms and Dads!

5

Hi again, sorry about my post earlier, I was anoyed with someone else and somewhat rude :blush:

…and I also have a great lack of intelligence in so many areas, so you’re not allone lol

Here’s a free and very good excersise you can do with your 3 year old (maybe even with your 2 year old.) I saw a video on youtube the other day about mental hide and seek, I can’t find the link but it went something like this:

  1. You’re sitting in the car and tell your child, I hid your favourite toy somewhere in the house.
  2. The child askes (or maybe to start off you will encourage) “Is it up stairs or down?”
  3. You say up stairs.
  4. Child asks, my room or yours? etc etc a very good mind building game.

Now for my logic game idea:
Say: I’ve got a bag of sweets (imaginary) and they’re all strawberry and lemon flavoured (demonstrate with your hands)
If I pick one and it’s not strawberry, then what is it? - very simple, but you can make it harder as your child becomes more familiar with the idea.
You don’t have to learn formal logic to introduce the concepts of logic to your child, just think to yourself, how do we use AND, OR, IF … THEN and NOT in every day language.

For truth tables / binary numbers you can for instance use smarties / MNM’s, pick two colours like red and blue to represent True or false / 1 or 0 / on or off (don’t say anything about true / false / 1 / 0 to your child, this is just a game to introduce a concept)

now say: If I only use red and blue MNM’s (now it would be easier if you actually have sweeties or blocks or counters of some sort to work with) and I want to arrange a row of two MNMs, how many different rows can I build:
red red
red blue
blue red
blue blue
thats 4 different rows, now build rows of 3:
red red red
red red blue
red blue red
red blue blue
blue red red
blue red blue
blue blue red
blue blue blue
thats 8 different rows, etc etc
play this many times with many things (beads, foods, anything your child likes) and your child will learn an important concept used for example in math, electronics and programming.

If you’re very patiant and trust me, you can wait for LR files, this topic is something that I have on my todo list, I’m thinking of doing a logic course with logic circuits, Venn-Diagrams, Binary notation and deductive reasoning all as child friendly as possable with images and examples for the small child, for my baby when he’s older, but there’s still a bunch of things I want to do first and as you know, us supermoms just don’t have enough hours in the day. :clown:

6

Thank you so much! I am printing out those ideas so that I can start implementing them. I can’t wait to see those LR’s too. :biggrin:

7

Great! I’d love to hear how your little ones respond.