Why Coding Is Important and How Children Can Have Fun With It

This post is brought to you by BYJU’s FutureSchool

Do you want your child to learn a new skill that could lead them to build their own tech platform?

Imagine being asked, “What does your child do for a living?”…Oh, they just created their own networking platform for the new generation. LOL!

Are you game (pardon the pun!) and tempted to kick the kids off Fortnite for long enough to explore some other amazing aspects of the online world? Then read on! You can thank me later.

There really is so much more to the digital world than just gaming and Snapchatting friends. Even though they think that is all there is to life right now.

Why not get them to try coding? You have got nothing to lose! I found an awesome platform called BYJU’S FutureSchool, check out the FREE trial offer below.

Coding For Kids

What is Coding?

Coding is basically a list of instructions that you give your computer to get it to do what you want. Hmm wonder if I can program kids this way? (There’s a thought!)

Coding is a fun tool for kids to exercise their desire to build, curiosity to question, and the imagination to explore – the skills we will serve any child throughout their education and well into any career or hobby.

By teaching the fundamentals of coding like – logic, structure, sequence, and algorithmic thinking, it enables kids to generate creative outcomes e.g. software, games, websites, animations, and apps.

Not all screen time is negative

Let’s face it, we all live in a tech-reliant world these days.

Encouraging children to learn coding activities, is keeping them engaged and creative rather than constantly observing mind-numbing games and online chats, which in turn makes their screen time positive.

Often, I use screens as a temporary babysitter, or zone out when our kids are explaining their latest Minecraft creation. But we should engage with them during screen time and maybe enable them to teach us a thing or two about the digital world and its endless possibilities.

Benefits of learning coding?

The Learning Potential website developed by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training explains, a basic knowledge of coding can be helpful for variety of different career paths.

Computer literacy and coding are very empowering skills that are helpful for solving problems in every field and industry, from biology to economics to finance and publishing.

While learning to code at the primary school level, children are encouraged to think critically and strategically to solve problems—often using very simple puzzles like getting an onscreen character to move around a maze. For younger children, visual blocks are often used to represent programming concepts and terminology, such as ‘procedures’, ‘loops’ and ‘conditional instructions’.

How I believe Coding Benefits Children

After attending the BYJU’S FutureSchool trial class with my son, we both found that coding also encouraged us to think outside the box a bit more. It was a great way for me and my son to spend time together and learn more about the digital world.

My son and I also realised that it encouraged us to:

1. Promote logical thinking – We had to tackle problems by breaking them down into smaller problems, which was easier for us to manage and solve.
   
2. Encourage creativity – It pushed us to use our creativity and learn how to come up with our own ideas in order to solve a problem.
   
3. Encourage perseverance and persistence – We discovered that persistence was key! And that in order to solve the problem, we had to just keep going, and come up with different solutions until it worked.
   
4. Build resilience and problem solving skills – When we hit a wall, it was up to us to find the solution.
   
5. Develop and grow communication skills – We soon learnt that computers only understand instructions when they are written in simple and easy to follow language that the computer understands.
   
6. Use our maths skills – We also found out that good Math skills are necessary when learning to code. Solving maths problems during our coding journey certainly kept us on our toes.

Coding is fun!

There are many different ways to make coding fun for kids. They can code anything from toys, games, activities, and apps, and even spend time reading books about computer programming.

Coding Toys
Coding toys are great for kids, and there are a range of different toys in the market to help engage with the subject. Coding a robot or Sphero ball is loads of fun!

Coding Apps and Games
Coding apps are a great way for kids to have fun while learning to code. Although computer programming may sound too technical for kids, apps are a great way to introduce coding in a way that kids won’t realise they are learning.

Minecraft is just one of many popular games that teaches the concept of coding.

Coding Books
Books about coding and computer programming are a great way to get kids involved and make coding fun.

If you think your kids would like to learn more about coding, then SAHM highly recommends checking out BYJU’s FutureSchool and taking advantage of their free trial class.

Find out more HERE and book your free trial coding class with BYJU’S FutureSchool