My daughter is following this book (Python for Kids) on her own now, and about a year ago we spent a while reading the Hello World book (http://www.manning.com/sande/) which is a very gentle intro to programming, Python and it was great. I liked Hello World a lot because it explained lots of terms in familiar language and the illustrations and characters were very funny.
She's 12 now so her expectations about games are more influenced by gaming consoles, so I think the next stop will be doing some simple stuff in the Blender Game Engine, which can be programmed in Python too, once she becomes more fluent on programming.
Both books use IDLE as the programming environment, which is fine, but expect to have minor issues along the way: you have to be aware of intentation rules (it's Python) and in one game the library name could not be found because the name started with a uppercase letter ("import Tkinter" in Ubuntu). In Ubuntu you may need to install some extra packages, etc.
I am working through 'the Hello World book'with my kids and plan to teach an after school course on Python next year. I am very pleased with 'Hello World' but am curious on your thoughts on which one you prefer. 'Hello World' or 'Python for Kids'?
It depends, I was more involved with my daughter when we read the Hello World book and it was really nice because some odd things about computers were explained in simple language, and the character of the kid which questions everything is really fit for this type of book. Also, there were lots of small games with different mechanics.
Python for Kids is really good also, has a intro about the Python language which feels more focused than the other book and it has a chapter about drawing with a turtle, as I did with LOGO many years ago! ... Python for Kids also has plenty of notes about running it on Windows, Mac OS X and Ubuntu so you'd be fine on any OS you have.
I think you should try both, but the best order would be to finish Hello World first and Python For Kids second.
I've read through the sample of this book and looked at the TOC and read Hello World from Manning, and honestly, as someone who has worked teaching programming to this age range, they kind of suck.
They don't teach kids how to think about programming. Their first instinct is to assault them with syntax and use words that aren't readily part of a kid's vocabulary (for example, introducing the concept of "types" and coercing (using that word) between them in like Chapter 3 is just a recipe for disaster) in an effort to give the kid results. "If they don't see results, they won't stick with it!" Bull crap. If you give them great results for the first hour, but then it becomes incredibly frustrating to proceed because they don't understand the fundamentals well enough to do anything useful, you're not doing anyone a favor.
I know Hello World was co-written with the author's son, and so obviously this isn't an across the board problem. But in my experience, if you don't teach how computers work (in general), how programs work (i.e., you type stuff, the computer does it, etc.), and how to develop logical thinking about problems and how to break them down, all you'll be teaching to do is ape the book until they want riff on it, at which point it just becomes an exercise in frustration.
There is always a learning curve, but I firmly believe that there is a very linear progression of thought that you can teach in that will make the learning curve much smoother for most of the kids trying to learn. I've been doing work on a book of my own very, very slowly, but I'm hoping to fix a lot of the pedagogical failures I see in these books.
Maybe it'll come out soon, but then again, the world ends tomorrow, so why bother? :)
Same here. My first introduction to programming happened with BASIC and I remember really liking it; how easy it was to write basic text adventures with almost nothing else than GOTO statements. While Python is little bit more complex it's still the best teaching language I know.
Somewhat off topic, but I've heard people here asking what the point of selling the Raspberry Pi to hackers first was. When I loaded mine up and looked through the recently-released Pi App Store, I noticed how many resources for learning Python existed already and were ported/developed for the Pi. Getting this kind of background in place before the full release to schools will be great (if it pans out).
I got into programming in the 6th grade via "Interplay's Learn to Program: BASIC." It was a little corny (there's a host that cracks lame jokes), but it totally changed the way I thought about video games and programming. At any rate, I'd say that if you can find a "game"-like presentation for any programming language, that would be the way to go instead of a book.
She's 12 now so her expectations about games are more influenced by gaming consoles, so I think the next stop will be doing some simple stuff in the Blender Game Engine, which can be programmed in Python too, once she becomes more fluent on programming.
Both books use IDLE as the programming environment, which is fine, but expect to have minor issues along the way: you have to be aware of intentation rules (it's Python) and in one game the library name could not be found because the name started with a uppercase letter ("import Tkinter" in Ubuntu). In Ubuntu you may need to install some extra packages, etc.