Teaching Kids to Code with 4-H

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Have you or your kids ever been involved in any 4-H programs?  I was as a kid, but I am just diving in with my own kids. I am excited to share our first experience with you today!  We received a Code Your World STEM kit from 4-H and have been having so much fun trying it out! If you are interested in teaching kids to code in your home or classroom, this is an awesome resource to use.

Teaching Kids to Code with 4-H

4-H is hosting a National Youth Science Day on October 1st to inspire kids to take interest in the various STEM topics. You know I love STEM, so this is a topic I am always happy to share about and encourage! The theme of this year’s challenge is Code Your World.  This focuses on computer science and teaching coding skills through fun hands-on activities. It was developed by Google and the West Virginia University Extension Service. It is a four-part challenge that teaches computer science skills through dance, digital animation and gaming.

The Code Your World challenge is easy for anyone to run and teach, even if you don’t have any coding or computer science experience. The kit comes with student guides as well as a facilitator guide to walk you through everything.  There are activities to do offline with no technology that teach beginning coding knowledge,  as well as online skills using Scratch to learn some programming.

Offline Coding Activities

The offline activities they really enjoyed were coding dance moves and flipping a coin or roll dice to play Rock, Paper, Scissors .  They also loved a geography activity  in the student book where they had to color in the countries of Africa with as few colors as possible without any colors touching. These activities are great at teaching problem solving, and teamwork.

We loved the fun variety of activities.  My kids have used and love the Scratch website, so they were really excited to have more opportunities to learn and explore it with the tips from the Code Your World kit.

We tried out the Animate Your Name activity and had a lot of fun with it. My daughter chose to animate a scene of a horse instead of her name. The Code Your World Kit has cards teaching all different ways to animate the letters, including change colors, spin around, grow and shrink, and more!

I have talked extensively on my site about the importance of STEM teaching (See my post on How & Why to teach STEM?)  Our world is so technology focused right now, it is so important that our kids are being taught the latest skills. These kids are our future creators!  They will be the innovators of new technology. Coding and computer science are obviously a central part of our world, so the younger they are when they begin learning these skills, the better. They will need the knowledge for their future careers.

I love how easily these tech skills come to our kids. They have been surrounded with it from birth, so it comes more naturally to them than the older generations. It excites me to see what new innovations will come from the next generation!

I highly recommend this Code Your World Activity!  It would be a lot of fun for teaching kids to code in a school, club, or homeschool setting!  Check out all of the details by stopping by the 4-H website.

See also my post on The Internet and Education