With anything that dad enjoys and wants the kids to enjoy, I share some advice from a golfer. He started with the objective to make it fun. He said to start with some playing for short periods on the lawn, or going to hit some balls on the driving range for a short time, with minimal criticizing and afterwards took his kids for ice-cream or some treat.
The most important thing is to provide opportunities, but don't let yourself or you kid get upset or stressed, ever. I have kids from 15 down to 8. I think that for serious programming, 10 to 13 is still pretty early. They don't have much patience and expect to be able to whip out some polished game in an afternoon that would really take 20 man years. The science fair was a good chance to have some incentive to work on programming and my oldest enjoyed that. I think whatever system you choose, you need to balance what it is teaching, how much you have to do to see results, how much fun it is to encourage continuing work. I have been blown away with the realization of how much you really have to understand to be a decent programmer. It is a huge curriculum. Take it in small chunks. At 4, I think the best idea is to just have fun with him. Play some puzzle games together and lots of hands on open ended building like leggos. (Save the mindstorms for later, or just get it for your self.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
