

Ask HN: Interactive programming lessons for Kids (Offline)? - gygygy

I have a little cousin brother who really loves learning about computers. According to him, he loves computer classes. I found out in &quot;computer class&quot; all they do is teach the poor kids how to use word and excel and how to save files in windows.<p>He is a very smart kid, and I tried to ask their parents to let him spend time online so that he could learn more about computers.<p>The parents are unfortunately scared of the internet, I tried to tell them about parental controls with no success so unfortunately, I don&#x27;t see him using the internet for the next 4-5 years.<p>Is there any interactive programming lessons which I could download, put in a drive and give him so he could follow them without having to use the internet.<p>It honestly breaks my heart to see a very intelligent kid spend all of his free time watching soap operas with his mom.
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S4M
It's not interactive, but there are plenty of videos available on youtube (for
example: this series explains how to make games with python and pygame [0]).
Since he doesn't have internet, you will have to download the videos, most
likely with youtube-dl [1]. So my suggestion is for you to decide what
programming environment is better for him to take on, get the corresponding
videos, and next time you visit his family you install him a text editor (I'd
suggest Notepad++), the programming language, and give him the videos.

Good luck!

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7joZ67mC6o&list=PLQVvvaa0Qu...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7joZ67mC6o&list=PLQVvvaa0QuDcxG_Cajz1JyTH6eAvka93C)

[1] [https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

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mkirsche
I just fiddled a little with Scratch 1.4
([http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4/](http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4/))
on my Raspberry Pi. It looks like a kid could learn the basics of programming
using Scratch (the Offline Editor) just by trial and error.

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brudgers
How about a book like _Realm of Racket_ or _Head First HTML and CSS_?

But keep in mind that programming is fun for some people and drudgery for
others.

