Teaching computer coding at a home school, we started with Grasshopper a free app by Google, that app starts out easy and gets harder progressively which is good for older learners but good for younger learners who can tolerate challenge. This teaches JAVA, but it’s a good place to start.

For younger learners who want to go slower, LEGO produced BITS N BRICKS which works well for kids. This teaches routing, which is a component of coding and can also teach some logic and mapping skills.

Accellus/Power Homeschool is a great school option for kids, it has a 10 year coding course that has an optional “Robot Dance” class to start with. You can simply simulate the robot or buy it, we didn’t buy it because we had a similar robot.

SmartGurlz Coding Robot has a learn coding app that I found too advanced, it is an okay introduction to coding, but there “learning” section on the app was not beginner-friendly, it would be better if you already understood the basics of block coding such as loops ext before attempting to go through the course. I strongly prefer Grasshopper to this to understand coding from a new learning standpoint.

The JIMA robot was different, you build it from scratch, the learning section of the app was slightly better for a beginner than the SmartGurlz Robot, but both would benefit from prior knowledge of block coding as you can learn from the Acellus class. If it is an option completing Acellus Robot Dance Class and STEM Coding 1 would be a better place to start before transitioning to the SmartGurlz or JIMA robots application learning lessons.

In order to build the Jima Dragon robot it helps to have practice building with plastic peg units, we started with the Gekobot (not a coding robot, just a moving robot) and when we got to the smaller plastic pegs of the Jima robot, the construction made more sense having done a similar construction of the same style already.

So coding is not robot building, but it can be more fun to code for a robot that you have built, rather than one that comes already ready to go. Coding and robot building together is a fun way to see how technology that is digital/abstract interacts with something tangible/physical.

Summary

For an adult learner, I recommend jumping to Grasshopper, free and fun for a small amount of daily practice.

Related Materials

For a young child, I recommend some kind of block coding app, such as Bits N Bricks, then when it’s possible the Acellus programs, if not to Grasshopper as well.

A good movie about computer coding was “Hidden Figures,” which is also a good movie about math, it’s not learning material, but sometimes knowing the context and history of a field of study can be inspirational and motivating.

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