Teaching Too Early
My first knee-jerk reaction as an Educator is to say, wait a second, a five year old is not going to be at the appropriate cognitive development stage to really be prepared for programming.
All this talk of programming languages for kids, BASIC, KPL etc.. are by people who don’t have degrees in Child Development, Education, Primary Education, Psychology, etc..
At most, I would venture to give timmy some LEGOs and let him enjoy himself. It will teach him how to build things, be creative, and encourage him to try out different things. Not to mention enjoy himself and have fun.
When you’re 5 years old, it’s about having fun. Don’t worry about programming languages like: Alice For the final stage I would recommend alice for OOP but without the headache!
Parents these days are too busy trying to force their kids to grow up faster, and it’s a big mistake.
Scratch Programming Language usage statistics
This is a breakdown of a programming language that is developed by MIT, that was recommended by someone on WIRED comments section.
Looking at it, it does indeed follow a bell-curve, albeit one that is heavily loaded toward the front and with an extremely well represented age group between 10-12 years of age.
So, again, all this talk of “programming” five year olds to be “programmers” is nonsense.
Take your children to the park and the petting zoo. Show him or her the wonders of the world. I remember when my entire family went horseback riding together in Hilton Head Island, SC when I was 8, I remember sailing along the rocky coastline of Sweden with my friend and his grandfather when I was 10.
That’s far more important, in my view, than racing to learn to program.