[Tutor] Ideas for Child's Project

[Danny Yoo]

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 1:46 PM, Stephen Nelson-Smith <sanelson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> My son is interested in programming, and has dabbled in Scratch and done a
> tiny bit of Python at school.  He's 11 and is going for an entrance exam
> for a selective school in a couple of weeks.  They've asked him to bring
> along something to demonstrate an interest, and present it to them.
>
> In talking about it, we hit upon the idea that he might like to embark upon
> a prorgamming challenge, or learning objective / project, spending say 30
> mins a day for the next week or two, so he can show what he's done and talk
> about what he learned.
>
> Any suggestions for accessible yet challenging and stimulating projects?
>
> Any recommendations for books / websites / tutorials that are worth a look?


You might want to look at Bootstrapworld, a curriculum for
middle-school/high-school math using programming and games:

    http://www.bootstrapworld.org/

Students who go through the material learn how math can be used
productively toward writing a video game.  Along the way, they learn
the idea of function, of considering inputs and outputs, and how to
test what they've designed.

As disclosure: I worked for this project for several years, and so I
am not unbiased.  :P  Also, Bootstrapworld is not Python-specific,
though you might look at the workbook materials and get some general
inspiration from them.


You may also consider http://code.org, which has further resources
that you can explore.  As I understand it, that uses a Scratch-like
environment and also puts proper consideration to its
middle-school/high-school audience.


Good luck to you!