Writing My First Book

As a homeschooling dad, I have a strong desire to teach my kids how to code.  I've given them many different coding curricula with varying degrees of success.  While they have usually shown a lot of progress with kids programs like Scratch, there was often a feeling that the general knowledge didn't translate well to actual multi-purpose programming languages like JavaScript or Python.

I have signed up for different programs and given them coding books for kids, but I kept seeing the same things happen again and again: the program would move at a pace that was too fast for them.  Frequently, they would create some impressive little programs using the book(s), but if I were to ask them how it works, they usually didn't have any idea.  When asked if they could produce the entire thing from scratch without looking, the answer was consistently something to the effect of "I have NO idea.  I wouldn't know how to start."

So this inspired me to start writing a book that could actually move at a pace that's appropriate for my own 6th- & 7th-grade kids.  So far, I am pretty happy with how it's turning out.  Several of my friends' kids are going through the book, and i'm encouraged about the pace at which they're moving.  Plus, Christine is doing the illustrations, and they are awesome!  Here's one example:

It's been a really neat project, and honestly more fun and even better writing than i expected!  If any of you are interested in working through an advance copy of the book, just send me an email.  I'd be very happy to share a link with you.

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