Technology has become such a massive part of our lives. It feels like everywhere we turn, there is a new tablet or computer that is begging for our attention. Programming might sound like a complicated concept that is just made for adults, but the reality is that you can teach coding to kids using something as basic as a set of building blocks or LEGOs! Your child might not care about making algorithms or anything like that, but they will have fun creating games or just playing around with different types of code. Here are some tips for teaching coding with building blocks.
Teaching Coding with Building Blocks
Why Should My Kid Learn Coding?
You may be asking yourself why should you even introduce coding to your kids in the first place. The reality is that technology has no plans of slowing down anytime soon, and we are mostly an online world today. As more and more things start to move online and on the web, computers are becoming a huge part of our lives. This means that codes are needed to keep these computers running, and learning to code can help open up new possibilities to your kids.
Teach Coding to Kids by Learning Components
The best place to start is with the basics. For coding, this means learning the different components. In this case, it means learning to sort. LEGOs can help give your kids a chance to practice sorting their bricks by color and eventually move to size and even shapes if you have more elaborate sets.
Learning and Recognising Patterns
Coding is all about learning pattern recognition. If you are learning binary, all of the information is in ones and zeroes, and the computer needs to be able to understand and recognize the pattern to give it meaning. Using your LEGOs, you can teach your child to start building and creating simple patterns. For example, you can have your child build the pattern and then recreate it. From there, they will begin to learn to predict what the pattern will be and what will happen next.
Assign Meaning to the Patterns
After you’ve helped your child learn to see and recognize those patterns, now we have to assign them meaning. An excellent way to do this is by having a pattern that represents a letter in the alphabet. A single brick might mean A while three might mean C. Using this; you can have your kids build words and even full sentences using the LEGOs. To show a computer that the code it’s reading is ending, there usually is something to represent the “end” of the code. You can do this by using a different color or even a different shape.
After they’ve done these activities, you can have your children create their codes using LEGOs! Coding is a challenging concept to teach kids, especially if you’re not a programming expert yourself. If you use these fun LEGO activities, your kids might find that they had a love for programming and coding all along.
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