| Nuture their curiosity. After showing my children how a Caesar cipher works(on paper), I left them an encoded message. They decoded it and then left me a message in return :-) While this isn't programming, encryption is a solid CS topic. We've covered the binary numeral system and logic circuit diagrams(again on paper) and various simple programs on the command line like: output a message 1K times in different patterns. The engagement comes with asking them questions like "what do you want the message to say?" and "what do you think it will look like if we add another space? or another tab?". We've tried some online resources like hourofcode.com, scratch.mit.edu, tour.golang.org, codecombat.com. Minecraft command blocks allowed them to try code written by other people, that was pretty cool. As others have mentioned, it was all spontaneous and organic. It felt more like playing then learning, like "check this out" or "here, let me show you something". All the topics and online resources were short lived. My children(11yrs, 7yrs) are being exposed to logic and programming in a piecewise approach. |