For the last 2 years, we've been teaching him math at home with the help of Khan Academy. While my son may not have been excited about our forays into IRB, I knew there was one thing he was excited about. The positive feedback was there - seeing 1 + 1 output 2 when typed in to an IRB prompt showed that something was happening, but it wasn't as exciting as I thought an introduction to programming should be. While the programming exercises I came up with were basic, they weren't all that compelling for a child his age. This was fun for the both of us and his questions were really awesome, but I found that it didn't hold his interest for long. I spent a couple of Wednesday mornings talking to my son about the basics of computing answering his questions, researching answers with him, and working on basic programming concepts in IRB. My initial approach combined a general introduction to computing with basic programming concepts in Ruby. These lessons are specific to me, but you may find them helpful. In the process I've discovered a few things that work and a few that don't. Since I'm new to this, there's definitely a lot of trial and error to figure out the intersection between their interests and capabilities. My two oldest (9 and 7) are now at a good age to start learning the basics, so I've been spending every Wednesday morning before work teaching them with the help of Khan Academy. If you've ever had the opportunity to work with me, this may or may not be a horrifying proposition - I'll let you be the judge. Like many other programmers with children I'm interested in passing my skills on to them.
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