Python for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming Paperback – December 22, 2012

This Fall, I plan to teach an after-school Python course at our local public school to 4th and 5th graders and I have selected "Python for Kids" to form the content. I had looked at a few books on teaching kids programming and on learning python and Jason Briggs' book stands out for several reasons.It makes programming and Python in particular accessible to kids with no experience with either. One of the great challenges in teaching kids is shedding assumptions about language, knowledge, perspective etc. that adults take for granted. Jason does this very well without talking down or dumbing down.I also found the book to be paced well with a balance of challenge (concepts and coding tasks) and support (explanations and help). When new terms or programming concepts arise, Jason makes sure to introduce them so nothing goes over your head.The first 12 chapters are a basic introduction to the language and to programming concepts and the last 6 take the reader through two programming tasks of increasing difficulty.The first task is the creation of a "Bounce!" game - it takes 2 chapters (21 pages) to teach and about 100 lines of code. It is a primitive "breakout/pong" style game and really a fair amount of payoff for the effort the budding programmer must put in.The second program is called "Mr. Stick Man Races for the Exit" and is a bit more advanced/involved. It takes 4 chapters (62 pages) to cover and about 260 lines. It has more complexity but most challenging thing is that for a lot of the code, you can not run it to check your work as you go. I had a bug in my code that took me a bit of effort to find before I got it working perfectly. However, Jason has a companion web site with all code snippets in the book including these last two projects and the code example he provided there helped my find the error I had made.I am very grateful to Jason for writing the book I was looking for.

[20160713 - Initial Review]I think the gaming "angle" to learning a programming language is great. You have fun and you learn. I was like a little kid showing my 8 and 9 year old sons the games I had created. =_)I enjoyed the idea of creating squares and circles and stars, etc, etc, as you can really get an idea of the using modules, classes, objects, functions and for me especially loops. I did stop at chapter 11 of 18. The first 11 chapters really helped me understand a lot about using python. I did not read through the remaining chapters because I don't need python for gaming in my work world but for file manipulation. I'm sure I'll be looking over the remaining chapters in the future if I need to reference some logic in those chapters that can help me. Overall, great reference book and I look forward to having my kids go through this book in the years to come.I'm looking to use the gaming angle again and have purchased Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, 3rd Edition.I've also purchased the following books to look over after Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, 3rd Edition:Python and Algorithmic Thinking for the Complete Beginner: Learn to Think Like a ProgrammerAutomate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total BeginnersPython Programming: An Introduction to Computer ScienceData Science from Scratch: First Principles with PythonP.S. No Starch Press covers are interesting. I kinda like that feeling, almost waxy!?