Computer science for a first grader - where to start?

Question

IT education

My son is in first grade. They have their own computer science, which develops something there (climbing in the browser?).

I want to give him the basics of normal informatics at home, not general education. There is a base - my son got carried away with Starcraft2 and knows how to use the mouse quite confidently (it still doesn’t win with me, but it’s a matter of time))) I

thought to start with Microsoft’s children’s BASIC. What else can you advise, colleagues? )

Answer 1

Mathematics! Give him math! By the time he graduates from school (what is the time limit now? 12 years?), MS VS 2020 will already be outdated, firefox will pass the hundredth version, and maybe even hl2ep3 will be released.
Then computer science, not a specific language. Boolean algebra will be more useful for your son than children's basic.
And further. Why do you need a programmer? Raise an astronaut.

Answer 2

I give 99.9% that in the 1st grade your child is studying this school-collection.edu.ru/catalog/rubr/ff2747bc-ab1...
For you to know, according to san norms, younger students cannot spend more than 5 minutes at the computer for the lesson. In this regard, in grades 1-4, classes in computer science are not held in computer classes.
And I would not let my child sit at the computer for a long time.
Books are the best at this age. I think it would be better to offer something popular science for children like Perelman.

Answer 3

no code! no-one! generally. In the first grade, children learn to read and they are still far from a logical understanding of what a programming language is. Educational games can help. And just like any game. It will help to develop motor skills, just understanding that the computer is not alive, but operates according to a rigidly set program.
Games will help in which children need to draw logical conclusions, analyze sequences of actions.
I speak only from my own memories. If I had been given (forced) to program in those days, I would not have taken a great interest in it later. The simplest sequences (no more than 2-3...5 entities, the general principle of operation) - from the 4th grade.
P.S. yes, I, and maybe you, have written my program before, but only because you were interested in it, and because you are. Offer children games, and for those who are interested, you can additionally show simple games like “draw a circle with a turtle”.

Answer 4

The basics of programming can be learned with the help of games like Light Bot, an analogue of Kangarenka, on which we taught the basics of algorithmic thinking at school.

Answer 5

I think it’s worth starting not with BASIC, but with books on a “general topic”, on the development of logic, just scroll through it yourself first - I remember they gave me a children’s book about “algorithms”, I didn’t understand anything then, but now I understand that the authors had to tear off their hands.

Answer 6

In our country, computer science began only from the 3rd grade (level: the most ordinary school)
There was a Logowriter logo.home.nov.ru/ - the turtle draws with commands what is needed.
Of course, there are also all sorts of standard games - to translate a goat with wolves and its other variations.

Answer 7

Maybe Lego Mindstorms ?

Answer 8

Check out Alice
This is a Carnegie Mellon University development for teaching kids how to code in a playful environment. The program is free.
There is a demo video on the link.

Answer 9

Not exactly about computer science, and not about first graders, but still for the future. Once upon a time, when I was little, I came across books from the "Children's Encyclopedia" series, Soviet, 80s. The books were about science, medicine, technology, discoveries. There were 12 volumes of them, I got only two, but later I saw the rest. So, 15 years have passed, a lot of books, articles, magazines, etc., etc. have been re-read, and those books are still associated with the best of the best books in terms of ease of presentation of rather complex material. If at that time I could understand the basics of nuclear physics (these are elementary school classes), the theory of relativity, the chemistry of polymers (again, there were several years before the first chemistry lesson), the anatomy and functioning of the kidneys, stomach, etc., etc., then this says something.
So I advise you to look for something like that and give it to the child, maybe he will like it (probably not in the first grade, but in the 5th), I highly recommend it. By the way, I came across modern children's encyclopedias ... I had a feeling that the task of the authors was not to give children knowledge, such nonsense ...
By the way, an encyclopedia was found online: Children's Encyclopedia
PS: and we were given "Kangurenka" in the 2nd grade, quite a good start as me though it was easy.

Answer 10

I think we should start by learning the Russian and English alphabets:
YTSUKENGSHSHSHCHZKHYVAPROLJEYACHSMITBYYO
and
QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM,
respectively

Answer 11

I remembered Kangaroo ROO.

Answer 12

Colobot, great game, quite interesting and with a built-in programming language, something like Pascal, if my memory serves me right.

Answer 13

An indiscreet question:
>There is a base - my son became interested in Starcraft2 and knows how to use the mouse confidently enough
Is this already a base for learning PROGRAMMING ???
It is rather a base for learning games (recently I saw in the news) a man playing counter for the Ukrainian team drives a new BMW bought with earned money.

Answer 14

Once upon a time, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueJ was very well spoken of - as a system that does not require knowledge of all the intricacies of the language to write programs.

Answer 15

everything is rightly said - first of all, logic and mathematics.
there are excellent books, martin gardner for example. try to pick up problems that are interesting for the child, there are different ones, ranging from “wolf, goat and cabbage” to quite complex ones, for example, combinatorics.
and also Feynman. I'm not really sure if it's first class.
when it comes to the code, you can try colobot and its analogues.

Answer 16

if you start, then definitely not with minecraft and not roblox ....
I would start with scratch and at the same time with a java script. And because Nick Morgan Java script for children.
Why java script? because any web browser page is still a java script and for five years it will definitely still be a java script
Scratch is good because it will give an understanding of how it works, logic
But a java script will make it possible to implement this work,

I can also offer my master class on python, with using scratch, but this is not for children
master class on python for beginners