5 Reasons to Teach Your Kids to Code

Have you ever thought about the benefits of coding apart from the fact that it is one of the most essential 21st-century skills? If your answer is yes, then you should know more about the wide range of benefits of coding. If not, then you’re in the right place to discover them.

In this blog, you will learn more about the benefits of coding that range beyond just learning to code. And, you’ll realize how coding enables kids to improve academic performance and acquire life skills.

Coding is a new kind of literacy for the 21st-century — it enables children to become independent citizens in a world where technology is ubiquitous. Learning to code helps students better understand one aspect of the digital world in which we live and, in some ways, become better prepared for it. 

The objective behind learning to code is no longer restricted to becoming a skilled coder and meeting the job market’s needs. It enables children to progress in all aspects of life.

Why Kids Should Learn to Code

The benefits of coding can be surprisingly wide-ranging. When it comes to preparing your kids for the future from an early age, coding opens the door to plenty of opportunities to acquire life skills and explore career opportunities.

Coding Nurtures Creativity

Coding for kids is a fundamentally creative process, as it starts with nothing and finishes with something. Just like painting or cooking, coding encourages a child to benefit from the satisfaction of completing the process. In the real world, creative acts are often limited by the materials we have at our disposal — like ingredients when we cook or paintbrushes when we paint. 

But with coding, where the virtual world is infinite, the only restriction is the child’s imagination. Creativity lays the foundation for innovation, ingenuity, and leadership because it represents the ability to connect existing ideas with new solutions, approaches, and concepts. 

Creative thinking begins with a questioning mindset. And, through coding, we enable our curious and imaginative kids to be the creative thinkers of the next generation. It can be taught by encouraging kids to experiment, explore their ideas, question their assumptions, make mistakes and learn from them. 

Coding Improves Math Performance

Learning to code makes math more fun and engaging.

Over the years, the belief has been that kids interested in coding should develop strong math skills. However, it turns out the reverse may also be true: coding can help children build math skills and make learning math more engaging and fun.

Math and coding are deeply related. Teaching kids how to code involves applying math concepts. Your kids will acquire these mathematical skills and abilities without even noticing, and while having fun.

When your kids participate in any coding, they apply principles that belong to mathematics and develop strong mathematical thinking that will help them in many areas of their academic and personal life. 

Coding Develops Problem-Solving Skills

The ability to code gives a new perspective to problem-solving. From beginners to professionals, anyone will tell you that writing code can become quite challenging. Through coding, children learn to fix problems and try again in different ways when something doesn’t work out. Coding also equips kids with the ability to stick with a problem and work on finding a solution. 

This problem-solving technique is transferable to a lot of other fields. For example, scientists solve problems by forming hypotheses and testing these hypotheses one by one. A coder tweaks parts of his code one component at a time to determine how to reach a solution.

Coding Enables Computational Thinking

With coding, children learn to think laterally when faced with a problem. Computational thinking is a structured and proven method designed to identify problems regardless of age or computer literacy level. It helps develop critical thinking and focuses on helping students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems.

It is “cross-disciplinary” in nature, and it makes sense to start teaching it in elementary or even preschool because all subjects are naturally blended for the students within the same environment. More than anything, computational thinking is an unbelievably valuable thinking tool — perhaps the thinking tool of the 21st-century. By learning to code, kids develop the method of computational thinking. 

Coding Promotes Learning by Doing

Children learn best through doing and exploring. Learning by doing refers to a theory of education expounded by American philosopher John Dewey. It’s a hands-on approach to learning where students interact with their environment to adapt and learn. Learning by doing is the idea that we learn more when we actually “do” the activity. 

For example, imagine a kid is learning to play a game. With the learning by doing approach, the kid would understand the app they are using to play the game. Later, they begin to discover more about the movement of objects, points they can earn, and so on. It involves active engagement, as it is not a passive practice. Active engagement facilitates kids with deep learning and encourages mistakes and noticing wrong movements, and allows kid to learn from these errors.

Final Words

It’s time to introduce your kids to coding!

To get your child interested, show them what coding allows them to make. Coding will enable them to do anything, starting from creating games and apps, designing animations, and much more. And, of course, it’s fun!

Most importantly, the ability to code transforms kids from passive consumers into innovative creators, with eyes that see every piece of technology as more than just a toy, but rather as a problem to solve and an opportunity to create. 

Even if your child wants to do something outside of computer science when they grow up, their coding skills will prove helpful across fields — coding teaches problem-solving, organization, math, storytelling, designing, and more. 

The benefits of coding come in handy for different aspects of life and allows kids to express themselves.  

Source: https://dzone.com/articles/top-5-benefits-of-coding-for-kids

Department of Information Technologies: https://www.ibu.edu.ba/department-of-information-technologies/