STEM for kids: Learning to code at any level
The Toolkit brings you curated introductions to programming.
Welcome to The Toolkit! This is issue #1. In every weekly newsletter, we’ll bring you STEM activities, videos, and online platforms for kids, curated by age range, plus all the relevant context and information you’ll need. (And some cool stuff for adults, too.)
The Toolkit is written by me, Caroline Delbert. I’ve spent my entire career as a journalist showing people that they can learn and be good at math and English and whatever else they want. Right now, I write daily science news for Popular Mechanics as well as articles about video games, mythology, music, and more.
Our goal here is to share things you and your kids will think are fun but that also lead to valuable skills and a curiosity about more complex ideas, sparking useful conversations. This week we’re talking about programming.
What is programming?
Let’s say you have a handful of coins, buttons, Lego bricks — whatever things you like. If you count those different things in any order, you always get the same number. If you count different coins in any order, they still add up to the same amount of money. For these things, it doesn’t matter which piece we pick up first or how we count the pieces.
Now, think about when you brush your teeth. You do steps in the same order every day and at the end you have clean teeth. Putting different steps in different places, like squeezing toothpaste before you have your toothbrush out, means you don’t actually brush your teeth after all — you just make a mess. You can’t just add these steps up in any order. Programming, or coding, is important because it’s a way of communicating proper instructions through technology.
There’s a classic exercise about programming for elementary or middle school students that anyone can do at home. Ask: How would you tell an alien how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Easy: First cut the bread. But cut it which way? Do you need to unscrew the top of the jelly jar before putting the knife in? The joke of the exercise is that the alien (aka the parent or teacher) takes every instruction as literally as possible, the same way a computer seems to constantly misunderstand what you want.
Brushing your teeth or making PB&J is like writing code to tell a computer what to do. You need the right pieces, and then you need to put the pieces in the right order. For each age group, I’ve picked a specific activity that lets kids learn about some aspect of coding — basic instructions like move or do; different users with different needs; and the freedom and creative thinking you can use when you code.
(For a more adult take on this subject, definitely read the writer and engineer Paul Ford’s classic essay, What Is Code?)
Ages 5-8: Simple actions with code blocks (1 hour)
Watch this video (1 min):
PBS Kids has a great programming app called PBS Kids Scratch Jr. (get it on Apple or Google Play), based on a simple code language called Scratch, a safe beginners’ coding environment. Scratch lets you build code with physical blocks that have easy-to-understand actions and cues — students might have already used it in school.
In this great activity based on the PBS show The Wild Kratts, you watch a 10-minute segment of the show and then use block cues like “grow” and “hide” to model animals in the app. You can also show kids examples of actions like making text bigger or smaller or turning volume up and down to help connect the animals to some real-world ways we use code.
Ages 8-12: Design an app for aliens (1 hour)
Watch this video (1 min):
Code.org’s courses include a fun beginner lesson called The Right App. In this project, you will think about different users, like a friendly fire-breathing dragon or a witch who loves games. Then they draw an app for a curious space visitor who has just landed on Earth.
This is a process that programmers and user-experience designers really do to make new apps. First, they study user stories to make sure the app they design will do what people really want; then, they wireframe (sketch out or storyboard) the way their app will look and work so that it can be studied, tested, and eventually made into actual code. (View Code.org’s slide presentation for the activity here; it’s a quick start and the instructions are under each slide.)
It also suggests an easy DIY activity: have kids draw a fictional app on a piece of paper, then break down what it does and why.
Ages 12-15: Animate your name (1 hour+)
Watch this video (7 min):
For older students, there’s a more open-ended Google and Scratch project called Animate a Name. Letter by letter, they build an animated word or name. With the Google project page in one tab and a new Scratch project in a second tab, you can watch short videos about adding individual letters and making different animations for them.
Looking up solutions to problems you encounter and Googling tricks you don’t already know is a big part of being a programmer. Coding is a great way to illustrate how it’s fine to ask for help; have flexible ideas and change your mind; and pause what you’re doing to look up what you can do next.
Bonus: Listen to this (swear-free) podcast interview with a very cool young programmer who has worked with everyone from Kanye West to Space X.
Endnote: If you pursue any of these projects, we’d love to know what questions you have and what worked for you or didn’t. Our email is toolkitnewsletter@gmail.com. Tag us on Twitter @toolkitstem or on Instagram @roboticsbeyond with the results! (We suggest posting your drawings of fictional apps.)
Advice Column: Our team wants to give you custom recommendations for STEM and design projects tailored to the needs of your students’ or families’ interests and at-home resources. We also want to answer questions related to careers and learning paths. Tell us about what activities you already like or something that’s missing from your own toolkit, and we’ll run our answers in the newsletter for everyone to use!
Wow that’s Cool! Earlier this year, a pilot named Christopher Freeze set a new world record for longest wheelie... in an airplane. He wheelied for almost three miles.
The Toolkit is written by Caroline Delbert and produced by Robotics & Beyond
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