Have you ever wondered why we teach our children to read, write, ride bikes, play musical instruments, or swim at such an early age? Probably not. After all, everyone knows that these are important or necessary skills that will help children throughout their lives. Furthermore, we all know how quickly young kids pick up new skills. So it makes sense that you should help your child learn it as early as possible, right?

So why aren’t we teaching our kids to code?

This may sound like a silly question. After all, many people of our generation consider coding to be a niche skill. People think that it is only important if you want a career in IT. But, in the coming decades, digital literacy will become one of the most sought-after skills in the job market and mastering these skills will give us the ability to continuously learn in an ever-developing industry. Whether we like to admit it or not we are living in an age that relies on technology and it will continue to grow and change. Plus, with these scripting tools, learning how to code doesn’t have to be as difficult as you initially thought.

Last year LinkedIn’s list of top 10 most important career skills included data analysis, web development, mobile development, SEO marketing, information security, and user interface design, all could lead to a career for the best seo company or web design company. With the rise of automation, these skills are going to become essential to your child’s career prospects. Simply put, now is the perfect time to start teaching our kids to code.

As Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, writes: “In fifteen years, we’ll be teaching programming just like reading and writing… and wondering why we didn’t do it sooner.” So why wait?

What Are The Benefits Of Teaching Your Child To Code?

Aside from just improving your child’s future job prospect, the development of digital literacy offers a number of other benefits. Kids who learn to code at an early age also develop the following skills:

• Logical thinking – coding requires students to use logical thinking to solve problems
• Creativity – student are required to come up with unique solutions to achieve a goal
• Mathematics – coding offers a chance to apply mathematical concepts to concrete situations
• Perseverance – the ability to persevere when faced with unexpected or difficult situations in central to coding
• Communication – coding is the language of the 21st century, and allows students to to interact with the world around them
• Responsibility – the sooner students learn how to safely navigate the internet, and the more aware they are of the risks or online spaces, the more secure and responsible they will be

What Can We Do To Help?

Despite the benefits of teaching kids to code, the Australian education system is still taking its time to catch up. In Victoria, students often study coding at a high school level, and then often only as an elective subject. So what do you do if you want to give your child a leg up?

That’s where we come in! We have created Yellow Brick Code, a fun, interactive school holiday program to be run during the upcoming September school holidays. Our course introduced students aged 5-8 to the exciting world of computer science. We also give them the opportunity to meet some wonderful new friends over their school holiday break!

Over 3 days, your child will learn skills in algorithmic thinking, programming and creative expression through stories, videos, hands on physical activities, games, fun programming challenges, and a group of colourful characters like Kieran the code block.

Maybe you would like to have a go at programming homework help yourself? But maybe you just want you kid to learn to code – if you’d like to know more about how you can introduce your kids to coding, click here to join our mailing list, and we’ll send you a free guide to running your own offline coding camp at home!