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by pasquinelli 1603 days ago
i've been homeschooling my daughter through middle school. she's very smart, she's been in the highly capable program since maybe 2nd grade. she honestly surprises me with her ability to reason, but i've yet to hit on a way to get her to understand loops. i've been considering learning an array language with her in the hopes that it would allow her the chance to get interested in programming and excited about its potential without facing loops.
4 comments
kthejoker2 1603 days ago
Definitely recommend MIT's Scratch, it's the closest thing (in terms of "they don't even know they're coding!") to Hypercard out there, tons of games and community examples, my kids make animated movies with it.

There's a board game Robot Turtles based on the Logo version where you provide instructions via a stack of cards to navigate your turtle through a maze.

The game is scored like golf, fewer cards are better, and it includes looping cards.

Definitely designed more for elementary students but it's visual, intuitive, and you (as parent) can "design" the maze.

There are several similar video games (they are simple and cute enough to paper their very dry subject matter, and they are level/puzzle based so easy to dole out in manageable amounts of enthusiasm )

Lightbot

Human Resource Machine

7 Billion Humans

Also my kids and I whiteboarded out and then coded a few of the games from

https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games

It was fun acting as the game designer who wanted this feature or that!

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AnimalMuppet 1603 days ago
Maybe program her?

Maybe something like, place three eggs on the counter in a row. Tell her "Pick up the first egg. Crack it into the frying pan. Put the shell back where the egg was. Pick up the second egg..."

Then, next time, tell her "For each of the three eggs, pick up the egg, crack it into the frying pan, and put the shell back where the egg was."

Would she get something like that?

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baash05 1603 days ago
Loops are easy.. You have 3 chocolates, and for each one you take a bite. If it's spicy filled, you stop eating them.

While there are still crayons in your bowl, the colors in the rainbow grows.

"what time is it mr wolf?" When you reach daddy/mommy you stop.

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BeFlatXIII 1602 days ago
What languages has she been learning and do they have list comprehensions?
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