Wow, I have to commend you on your keen sense of observation. I really did not notice that. I was looking for a clean picture with a light background, but I know what I'm looking for next time I search for a picture of someone typing :) Thanks for reading though, I do appreciate it.

Lol, I agree, pretty horrible stock photo, I do play chess - somewhat - and you're right, I should've used a better photo :)

Thanks for the comment, you're right the subtitle kinda sucks, I actually hesitated when I wrote it but I eventually left it.

I know what you're saying, and the funny thing is that when I wrote that, I actually paused and thought about the proper way of referring to LEGO. So if you google "playing with legos" there's a ton of articles that use that expression, such as this one on HuffPost for example: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/google-legos_n_4681...

So kids 'playing with their legos' is valid given the fact that LEGO has become a household name and LEGO can refer to the brand, the game itself, while Legos, or legos can refer to the LEGO blocks themselves. It's sort of like using Google as a verb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_(verb))

Thanks for reading btw

PS. English is my third language so a grammatical error here and there wouldn't be that bad anyways :)

'Legos' is a very North American term so you may have just picked up an (incorrect) slang.

This was an interesting discussion if you're genuinely interested: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10839/legos-not-l...

Most North Americans will have been brought up with the incorrect usage, and will defend it strenuously, but they are wrong. The correct plural is Lego, or, if you want to get specific (as you did in the article), lego pieces or lego bricks. The company spent many years trying to teach correct usage but gave up in the end. But correct is still correct, and if english isn't your first language, there is still time!

Even in the verb usage 'kids playing with their lego' - you don't pluralize the term.

Awesome, let me know how that works out :)

Cool thread, I just started a thread about teaching my own daughter how to code a few hours ago :) First off, congrats on the intention. I believe code literacy is going to be a key educational principle in the 21st century so good for you on taking a step towards that so early.

For me teaching my kids (I've got 3) is not so much about getting their brains stuffed with algorithms and technical stuff, but it's more about giving them access to a world where they can create art. I personally believe coding is more like painting than it is building a bridge. It's a creative process , where things like inspiration make a world of difference.

So the first thing I'd recommend is getting your daughter used to creative activities like drawing, Legos, building stuff, number games, word games, stuff like that. See how she likes it. Then try more advanced things. I started teaching my daughter math early on, since she was about two. We started with counting, then moved up to counting by 2s then backwards, just to see how her mind worked and how she would respond to creative problem solving.

It turned out she loved it and to this day she loves solving problems like those games where you have to almost identical pictures and you have to spot the differences, etc. She also likes playing match-3 type games on the iPhone and playing word games.

So get her started with that. If she sees math as fun, I think that's the first and probably the biggest win.

yeah I wondered about string myself, I don't see how a child could get "strings". I think they would get "letters" or "words" or even "text". That's why I just didn't get into strings, I just let them type stuff and see the result of what they were typing in the simulator which was thrilling. And when it came to teaching variables I went with int's. Even that was a long shot. I just went with "it's just a number" and I think that should be sufficient for lesson #1 :)

yeah that's a good point; I really wonder about conditional statements though, I think control flow should be straight forward, but I would think you might need to start off with variables and primitives at least.. what do you think?

Agreed - you can't really do much without variables/primitives first. Which are might be conceptually harder to grasp

haha that's awesome, I had no idea about a lot of stuff when learning but that's the amazing thing, you don't need to know everything to get started and start building things, and that's what scares people off, they think they have to get a math or comp sci degree to code something basic

that's look really really interesting! I was actually thinking of looking into tablet apps that teach kids stuff like that in a fun way. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out