Many parents  hope that their sons and/or daughters will get involved with technology at an early age. Computer programming, as a way to get kids involved in technology, can be taught and well understood by today's kids as early as when they are 6 years old. That may seem like a little too early as at that age, because the child barely has any formal educational background. However, the truth is that computer programming teaches kids logic thinking, and logic is something that children should embrace as early as possible (some education experts say that kids should embrace logic even before they learn how to speak a language).

A more common age, for many children, seem to be around 12 or 13, or the equivalent of 7th or 8th grade. Unfortunately, today's public schools usually will not teach kids computer programming until after they are in Grade 11 or 12. Luckily, there are some online schools, like  homesweetlearning.com, that teaches kids 10-15 Java For Kids and Mobile Game Programming For Kids.

So how to teach kids programming? The first question to bear in mind is what programming language should the child learn? There are programming languages that are designed to teach kids programming, like Scratch and Logo. The problem with teaching these kids-oriented programming languages is that they are of little practical use. These kids-oriented programming languages are tied to narrow platforms on which almost no modern apps were developed.

People chose these kids-oriented programming languages on the wrong notion that it is easier for kids to understand. Our experience at homesweetlearning.com teaching kids programming and coding shows that kids 10-15 years of age can understand full-fledged programming languages such as Java, Basic, C, just as easily. In fact, today's 10-15 year old kids can even understand more complex concepts such as objects, classes, methods, inheritance quite well.

Of course, a full-fledged programming language such as Java, Basic, C, C++ does not have the rich-set of attractive graphics that the kids-oriented programming language such as Scratch, Logo may have. However, this only makes sense for very small kids (maybe kids under 10). And there are a lot ways for the instructor to make the learning interesting and applealing to the kids. For example, in homesweetlearning.com's Java For Kids and Mobile Game Programming For Kids classes, a workshop approach is used to make the learning an interactive and hands-on process. In each session of the programming workshop, the kids work toward a clearly defined goal of completing a small app. And the small apps that the kids work on are usually what they like most, the games. Kids attend such programming workshops with a good sense of satisfaction. At homesweetlearning.com, we think that modern programming languages, meaning the ones that the parents are using in their jobs, like Java, C, C++, etc., are the most effective and direct way to teach programming.