7 Fun and Educational Online Resources to Introduce Your Kids to Coding
Teaching a child to code is no longer just a good idea for their future professional development or just a great way to improve their cognitive abilities early on. Nowadays, it seems rather clear that basic coding skills are something everyone will need to have in the near future. The same way learning Microsoft Word and Excel was seen as something done for professional reasons 30 years ago, but is a basic computer skill today, coding is set to be a must-have for anyone in the near future.
Yet, teaching kids how to code can be very tricky. The wrong coding course can either be too boring or too challenging to hold a child’s attention. Or, often, both boring and challenging at the same time. So, finding the right online coding courses for your children is essential for parents nowadays. To that end, here are our recommendations for 7 fun and educational online resources to introduce your kids to coding.
1. CodeMonkey
Probably the best learning tool for kids in the K-8 age range right now, CodeMonkey a pretty unique learning platform. CodeMonkey stands out in a sea of online courses that are boring to go through both with and without a tutor’s help, that have an unbalanced learning curve that’s either too slow or spikes up too quickly, and that don’t offer a broad and holistic enough approach to teaching kids the basics of coding.
CodeMonkey teaches both Python and CoffeeScript (a beginner-friendly version of JavaScript), and goes about it through fun puzzle games and captivating child-friendly graphics. Some of the courses on CodeMonkey are great for solo practice, while others require a tutor’s help, depending on what your child needs. As such, this platform can be used both at home and in the classroom.
2. Codeacademy
A coding platform that has been popular for quite some time, Codeacademy is a bit pricey compared to many of its alternatives, however, it does offer a wide range of learning materials. Codeacademy can be used for various skill paths related to the coding field and it includes lots of different courses and practicing tools, all arranged in tiers between the beginner-friendly and advanced coding skill levels.
3. Coursera
Coursera is a large educational platform that isn’t focused just on coding, but on a much broader field of courses and specializations. This makes it a fantastic tool for both classrooms and for homeschooling, or even just for large families that want to supplement their kids’ school education in several different fields with just one educational platform.
This can drives Coursera’s overall subscription price higher than that of a coding-only platform like CodeMonkey, but that can be worth it, depending on what you need. In terms of coding, Coursera’s resources are quite extensive and well-balanced too.
4. Khan Academy
The coding courses on Khan Academy focus on JavaScript, Python, and SQL, while the platform as a whole also offers courses in math, science, and general test prep. Most of the courses on coding, in particular, are done with a lot of videos, online coder insights, and interactive characters, which is a helpful way to go about it, especially if you want your kids to be able to study without a tutor’s help.
The academy has online coaches and students to interact with, too, which helps both with insight and evaluating your kids’ courses and giving them feedback. T courses on Khan Academy also offer a nice difficulty gradation, and passing onto more advanced courses requires a passing grade in previous ones. At the more advanced levels, however, there is often an insufficient number of coaches to help kids, which can slow the progression down a bit.
5. Scratch
An educational program that’s focused on coding for kids specifically, Scratch is a pretty good introduction into coding for most children. The platform has built its courses with fun and kid-friendly graphics, and most of the coding elements are presented as colorful “building blocks” that easily snap together to illustrate how coding works.
Not only is Scratch fun, its courses are also easily shared with friends and can be downloaded for offline projects too. There isn’t really a proper “bridge” to actual coding built into the platform, however, so, Scratch is mostly for those who want to first introduce their kids to the basics of coding before moving onto something more serious.
6. Blockly
Like Scratch, Blockly is a cool platform for introducing beginners to the very concept of coding. Blockly is an open source library of “blocks” that can be dragged, dropped, and arranged in various ways, all of which add information to the chain. This is done to then generate computer codes, which, in turn, illustrates to kids and other beginners how coding actually works.
Once they have generated their code with Blockly, users can convert the blocks into Python, JavaScript, or other scripts and see how coding really works.
7. Swift Playgrounds
Swift Playgrounds is a course made for the Swift programming language, in particular. The course also only works for iOS and Macs, as Swift is used to develop iOS apps. If this is what you’re looking for, however, Swift Playgrounds does offer a great introduction for kids to coding with this programming language. The course offers various challenges and difficulty levels, all presented in a fun and engaging way, with colorful graphics and an intuitive interface.
