As a parent, we know there are many extracurricular options, and all of them promise to put your child ahead. Learning coding for students, whether they’re kids or teens, is a highly beneficial activity.
Learning to code does more than teach your children words and structures. It stimulates their brains, helps them build life skills, and even fosters interest in well-paying STEM careers. At Penguin Coding School, we believe everyone can code, and we’re here to help.
Technology is Only Becoming More Prevalent
These days, technology is everywhere. Smart devices are in our homes, in our pockets, and necessary in many job fields. We expect the use of these devices and technology in general will only increase.
Learning to code helps your kids understand these devices and work with them appropriately. Coding is an essential skill for 21st-century citizens, especially as the future becomes more technical.
Demand for Coders
Demand is high for STEM-educated individuals, and coders are no exception. These skilled workers are necessary for a wide variety of fields, not just rocket science or biotechnology.
Unfortunately, there is a significant gap between what schools can do and what needs to happen. In 2018, only 1 in 3 adults believes teachers had the resources to provide STEM education. That’s an enormous gap and means coding for kids and students falls more on parents.
Improved Creativity
Creativity is essential for living a happy, fulfilling life. When kids learn to code, they’re experimenting and developing self-expression. These exercises feed their brains and creative centers, fostering more creativity over time.
Increased Persistence
Coding for kids, students, and teens increases persistence. Persistence comes into coding when the code does not deploy the first time correctly. Then students must backtrack, reevaluate, and fix the problem before they can continue.
Persistence is one of the most useful traits in life. Learning this means that your child will continue to try something until they succeed, rather than giving up when there is an obstacle. It’s a multipurpose skill that will serve them well.
Coding Teaches Problem Solving
Problem solving is one of the most in-demand job skills today. Problem solving itself is nothing more than recognizing a problem and identifying solutions. However, it has wide-ranging implications for your child, from academics to demonstrating initiative to employers.
Every stage of how kids learn to code is engineered to foster problem solving. How they tackle the challenge initially is problem solving. The debugging process is another problem-solving exercise. Even altering existing code to do better teaches this skill.
Coding Supports All of Your Child’s School Subjects
Coding for kids, students, and even teens supports all the academic subjects. Coding is a whole brain activity and supports many of the skills necessary for academics. For example, the problem solving in coding helps students develop the same knack for math homework.
Coding is Another Language
In recent years, there have been many studies on the effects of learning a second language on children. Those studies have all demonstrated enormous positive benefits. While not quite the same as French or Chinese, when kids learn to code, they get the same benefits.
Coding for kids and students lights up similar areas of the brain. Plus, coding has more guaranteed applicability since it’s learning the process and structure that can apply to any coding language.
Kids Who Code See Results Now
Unlike many pursuits, when your kids learn to code, they can see the results immediately. These results encourage your child to continue learning. It also means many believe you when you say their less tangible pursuits, like math class, will pay off eventually.
Coding for kids and students is typically gamified so they can see how changing the code changes the activity. However, in recent years, coding has also moved into kids building full applications to enjoy too.
Children Learn Organization
While your children learn to code, they will also learn the organization. Coding, especially for younger kids and students, requires structure to function correctly. We find that the first time students have to go back and debug, the importance of organization sinks in.
Coding organization tends to apply to other pursuits as well. A student who puts the time into coding becomes an organized teen who understands what they need to do to pass their classes in many cases. This organization also makes for more methodical problem solvers later in life.
Everyone Learns Resilience
Resilience refers to adaptation in the face of adversity and stress. When people learn to code, they’re exposed to stress in a way that they learn to manage it. This practice, in turn, positively impacts later future situations.
The entire process of learning to code builds resilience, but no part more so than the infamous debugging process. It requires many different skills to debug successfully. However, kids, teens, and students generally see the rewards of adapting over giving up, which is essential.
Collaboration is a Life Skill
In the real world, coding is not a solitary activity. We aim to teach that too at Penguin Coding School. Our small class sizes encourage students to get to know their classmates and work with them on various projects.
This collaboration practice often encourages our students to participate in other forms of collaboration as well. By learning to work well with others on something technical, your child will be more open to other collaboration forms, such as group projects.
Wrap Up
Coding offers numerous benefits for kids, students, and teens. Getting them into coding does not need to be complicated or theoretical either. At Penguin Coding School, we support students of all ages and ability levels as they learn to code.
Check out the classes Penguin Coding School has to offer and find out when our next session starts here.