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Ask HN: How to teach a 4 year old to code?

5 points kamphey | 1 comments | 28 Aug 25 23:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source

Have you had any experience teaching a 4 year old how to code? I'm thinking about not just typing but the mindset of automation and programming. My son is in a weekly class called Kiddie Coders and they are learning directions and how to put arrows together on a sheet of paper to get someone through a series of squares.

I was thinking of putting together activities at home so he can see how to tell instructions to someone who is blind, or follow instructions like a recipe (the favorite analogy to coding seems to be cooking)

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ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 ◴[28 Aug 25 23:47 UTC] No.45058313[source]▶
This article covers some things, I guess

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11109739/

It highlights https://www.scratchjr.org/

replies(1): >>45058364 #
1. kamphey ◴[28 Aug 25 23:55 UTC] No.45058364[source]▶
this part seemed interesting:

  "The experimental cohort outperforms the control group with statistical significance in comprehending potent ideational constructs encompassing representation, algorithms, and hardware/software interplay. Conversely, the control group performs better in grasping the debugging concept than their experimental counterparts. "
But when I read further it's that the assessment had to do with a seesaw, which the control group had a literal seesaw they can use before and understand. While the experimental group was learning more abstract debugging.

So from this I think I'll use more in-person items and building literal things that have a problem, to teach debugging. Perhaps some kind of marble run. And discuss with him what he thinks will happen (the expectation) and the difference between that and what actually happens.