Learning how programming works and learning a few coding languages is fun and often useful (especially in a digital-centered world) why so many parents are turning to online coding for kids. But, isn’t it a bit much to ask that your entire family gets into coding? The question is a good one but is works under the assumption that learning coding is a very esoteric and/or difficult thing, and that is just not the case. If you were living in Texas, wouldn’t your entire family speak Mexican too? If you were living next to a lake, wouldn’t your entire family know how to boat and/or swim? Getting the whole family into coding is no different than getting them all into horse riding, camping or playing darts.
Explain What Coding Is and Its Benefits
There is no need to make the “Big Sell” when it comes to coding. You may have to dispel a few incorrect assumptions about it, but it isn’t the sort of thing you need to really push on your family. It is just like learning sign language, you teach parts to people as you go about your life, you help them understand the meaning, and eventually it becomes a family thing.
If you are going for the presentation, for the “Everybody in the living room for a meeting” method, then find a few YouTube videos that explain coding and what it is all about. Help the people in your family understand the concepts behind coding and how it may help them. Also, explain how it can be a fun family activity and something that you can all have in common.
Start With Coding Games
You can get anybody into any sort of thing if there are fun games to play. The reason why so many terrible MMO games exist is because most things are fun if you are doing them with friends. Even factory jobs are fun if you are working there with friends.
Go looking for coding games online and see if there are any that will appeal to your family as a whole. This cannot be stressed enough, find some coding games that are fun, and the people in your family will take to the subject with gusto. You can even consider signing up for online kids coding classes.
The only thing to be careful of is for the people who fall behind. The people who do not have as much fun because they are not learning as quickly as the other people. In these cases, you need to add in games that also favor luck. There are many ways these work but try to avoid games where drawing on knowledge and answering questions is the main goal. Also, if you do have question-answering games, then rotate the groups because the people who are struggling can usually hide behind their stronger teammates.
Set Coding Challenges
This is going to require a certain amount of financial backing to get it off the ground, but you can set up coding challenges and have the people in your family try to solve the challenges. The cheapest are the escape rooms were the clues are parts of logic games that revolve around coding challenges.
Some of the more expensive challenges require you to buy programmable devices and have each person set up their own programming. Then, they all have to do something either alone or at the same time. For example, for alone activities, you could set up a tennis ball and each programmable robot has to pick it up from the same spot. On a similar note, you could have everybody run their programs at the same time, and their programmable robots have to get the ball into the safe zone before all the others. It sounds convoluted, and it is, but it is one of the few ways you can all play games in the real world where everybody learns to love coding.
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