Coding For Kids: How To Introduce Your Children To a Techie Lifestyle

Just like food, clothing, and shelter; technology has become something we cannot do without as humans.

We interact with different forms of it daily, hence, it is ideal to ensure that your kids learn about it from the cradle, leading to them becoming a guru even before the age of 18.

Coding for kids in Nigeria is far beyond handling technological gadgets, interacting with websites, playing games of any sort, and the likes.

It is kids developing their games, creating their mobile applications, and making problem-solving innovations for the tech world. It involves fostering their perseverance, strengthening their analytical skills, and keeping them fit for jobs.

Amazingly, numerous websites, online games, apps, and platforms allow your kids to learn coding at an easy-to-understand, convenient, and effective pace.

Each forum has its uniqueness; all you need to do is find the one that suits your child or children cognitively.

Stick with me as I show you simple ways to introduce a techie lifestyle to your wards plus the best online apps and websites for kids’ tech classes, even in Nigeria. Keep reading!

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How To Introduce Your Children To a Techie Lifestyle

A report shows that in the next decade, there will be more than 1.4 million online jobs. But as of now, they are only 400,000, meaning that over a million others are yet to be discovered.

Teaching your kids one or a few technological skills at an early age puts them at an edge.

Happily, you don’t have to be a programmer as a parent or tech-savvy before you change the course for your child. Here’s how to go about it.

Be a role model

When you do what you teach, it makes learning coding or programming languages online easier for your kids.

I am not saying you have to take up a Python coding class or SQL tutorial. Rather, acquire some tech knowledge when you realize that you don’t know it.

These days, children are exposed to computers at a tender age. You build up the tech enthusiasm in a child when you engage in tech as well.

Plus, make your kids know that your car, the POS machine, ATM, TV, remote control, washing machine, and the likes, are examples of computers, to boost their knowledge.

While you are a role model in the making of their techie lifestyle, you are concerned about what they involve in thereby monitoring the websites, applications, and products they interact with. You can play video games together. Every time, open them to the reasons for making them learn coding online as a global citizen and as a Nigerian.

You should also let them know the number of hours that is ideal to spend as screen time, the adverse effect of tech, and how to tackle them.

These adverse effects include; cyberbullying, cyberterrorism, hacking, inhumane website visitation, pornography, etc. Explaining these won’t make them misuse the potential in coding for kids.

Engage them in an enabling environment

This particular point is essential for all children, particularly, preschoolers (ages 1-4 years+).

You might want to engage your kids in an online class that serves coding for kids or a mobile application that simply teaches decomposition, sequencing, algorithms, loops, and branching.

Better still, they could engage in problem-solving games, solving a maze (which helps to sustain resilience), puzzles, building blocks (to aid in learning logical thinking), and following a set of LEGO (an attempt to build instructions).

You can drill them through the basics, while you move from simple to complex, broad to channeled, year-in-year-out.

Remember, children learn by fun, hence, you will have to ensure that the method of learning is student-centered, project-based, and interactive enough for them to learn.

By doing these or any, you are set to lay the computational thinking building blocks and promote unplugged coding tasks before diving into the main deal in a couple of years. This is how coding for kids can help find a child’s hidden potential.

Read also: 4 recent gaming technology trends for players.

Use real-life issues

In the process of introducing coding to your kids, it may be that they have come across what coding is, perhaps learnt it in school, or heard it from someone.

You will want to explain the concept of coding to them using the real world. If your little kid is a potential entrepreneur, why not tell him that a concrete knowledge of technology can foster his business beyond and inside Nigeria? (without stepping an inch away from his home).

Do your kids like watching YouTube videos or going to the cinemas or handling gadgets?

You can discover that with aids on coding for kids, and from there they can learn to create their video-based websites (where their favorite cartoons can be published directly), make a movie of theirs, and upload it as a kid, since tech isn’t age, race, skin, or gender-biased.

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Teach them the fundamentals

Speaking about kids from ages 1-4 years, depending on how quick to learn, speak and communicate the child is, you can begin to teach them the software and hardware components of the computer making use of things they can relate with.

Before introducing coding online, or interacting with mobile applications to learn any tech skill, you can teach them basic computer ethics such as keeping the difference between a dining table and a computer table intact.

By that, I mean distancing food, drinks, and liquid substances from laptops, phones, electronic gadgets, and TV, washing their hands before handling a tech device. It also includes not sharing their personal information (home address, phone number, school, name) with anyone, etc.

Read also: Top 10 Coding hacks in Python every developer should know.

Enroll them on the right platform

The internet is saturated with several platforms and websites where you can register your Nigerian kids for online coding, programming, and tech skills.

However, the only way you can be on the right track is by choosing one that blends with your work and the child’s schedules. One that has the exact course for your wards, simplifies the teaching with proven records based on reviews from users.

You need not worry, there are free and premium online coding for kids apps and websites for your kids. Below are the free ones that work in Nigeria.

Platforms to learn Coding for Kids

CodeKarts

It is ideal to use in Nigeria if your kid is other than or as old as 4 years. The app supports both android and iOS users. Logic, focus, and observational skills are enhanced here as it teaches preschoolers via pre-coding games.

Coding Safari

What else do you expect from one of the few apps that offer 2+ kids all they need in having pre-coding knowledge?

A couple of educational activities with rapt attention to decomposition, problem-solving, and computational thinking in place. Coding safari can only be used on iOS devices. One of your best options when it comes to coding for kids.

SoloLearn

The majority of its users are adults, however, you can find various age-grades on it.

It is an online coding and programming platform where learning can be aided either on its app (Android and iOS friendly) or its website. But with the app, you have a greater experience.

Read also: A full guide on how to learn machine learning, from basics to pro.

Conclusion

C++, CSS, HTML, C, Python, Data Analysis, and all other coding skills can be learnt from scratch to an advanced level. For a start, you can kick off your kids’ coding career by learning the fundamentals of programming or any tech skill.

I hope this was helpful to you. Let’s know your thoughts in the comment section.

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About Author

Michael Olorunwumi

Michael Olorunwumi, is a final year student at the University of Ibadan, studying English language and Education. He is an SEO content writer, spoken word artiste, poet, Kampala textile designer, and rapper.