Target: Age 12 to 15
About: This is written with one student in mind, my son. He is currently 14 years old. I am not a teacher or a programmer. I am just a dad that wanted to hang out with his kids and help them to create fun and cool toys to play with. I learned Python specifically to teach my children and have no training. This is our path.
Heavy on repetition. Light on theory.
Avoid Scratch and Alice if child is older than 12. Teach them to type. Use a text editor or IDE, the same tool professionals use. Avoid sandbox environments designed specifically to teach children. My son uses Komodo Edit. I use Emacs and PyCharm. This is my personal philosophy based on my own experience teaching my own child to program. Choose your own path.
When my son was 12, he broke the screen of his cheap mobile phone during cross country. I let him suffer with his broken screen for a year and then finally bought him a used Android phone on eBay for $40, including shipping. That first phone was a LG Optimus S with Android 2.2. It was the first Android phone in our family. My wife and I were previously iPhone people.
That old, slow Android phone started us down the path of mobile app development using Pygame Subset for Android (pgs4a). It was the breakthrough moment. It allowed him to share his games with his friends and our family. It provided the motivation to keep going. Our family curriculum is now based around pgs4a.
Six modules that must be done in sequence.
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The Blank Screen
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The Stationary Square
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The Moving Square
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Touchscreen movement
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Going Mobile - Getting your app on your Android phone
- Adding Android-specific code
- Configuring pgs4a
- Loading the app onto your phone with a USB cable
- Putting it all together - Adding graphics and a virtual controller
###Group 2
Two suggested modules are 2D scroller movement of the ground/background
and character animation of the running man.
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2D ground scroller basic
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Pygame character animation
Many different paths. Pick your own
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2D Tile map basic. No loader. Map doesn't scroll (see Swarm game)
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Tiled 2D tile map creation in JSON format
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Building the json loader to get the map onto the phone
Except for Swarm, there are video tutorials for all the lesson blocks. Each of the eleven lesson blocks above is more than one day of lessons. Assuming one class per week, the JSON loader lesson could take months to complete.
Blog for teaching children Python programming. http://pychildren.blogspot.com
- PyChildren github Code Repository of Lessons
- PyChildren YouTube Channel with tutorials
- PyChildren Blog
