Abstract:

Children in the 21st century are digital natives. They have been raised in an environment surrounded by technology. However, it does not mean that they understand how technology works or to correctly interact with digital devices. Without guidance, children could limit their interaction just to use the technology as pasive consumers, losing the potential of creating their own programs and digital devices. This could be one of the reasons (among many others) why, in the last decades, there has been a great deal of research in how to teach coding skills to preschoolers. However, teaching coding skills to preschoolers is not an easy task. Some of the most important issues that have to be addressed are:
(i) which type of device should be used,
(ii) how to integrate teaching code skills in the curricula;
(iii) the appropriate age for the first coding experiences; and,
(iv) which program and/or programming language or coding blocks should be used.

Regarding the type of device, given the development stage of children between 3-5 years old, it cannot be supposed that children are going to be able to read, write or use a computer mouse. Thus, drag and drop movements in tactile devices, or tangible manipulations with robots are usually considered most adequate. However, no all Early Childhood schools may afford the cost of robots. Unplugged approaches such as using books could be the solution to those cases. In this paper, the use of stories such as the “Hello Ruby” book written by Linda Liukas is proposed.

Stories have been used to teach values, to have fun, and to many other goals in Early Childhood Education. For instance, the “program” concept can be explained to the students in the story as a routine. The main character may have to cook a cake for her birthday. The recipe to cook is like the program to code. Each line of the recipe like a line of the program. The use of metaphors for Primary Education students have proven useful. The difference is that, in the case of Early Childhood Education the abstraction should be removed, and the use of routines and movements enhanced.

Regarding how to integrate teaching code skills in the curricula, Pre-School Education has usually the advantage that teachers have more freedom to choose the pedagogical approaches to achieve their didactic goals. It means that schools could integrate teaching code skills in the preschooler projects according to the time and resources they have used. Regarding the age, there are authors that have proved that 4-years old children are able to code. Regarding the program and/or programming language/coding blocks, and given that preschoolers may have limited dialogue skills, coding blocks are usually preferred. In this paper, the interaction of little children with the coding blocks is proposed, following an unplugged approach, by using foam.

How to teach future Early Childhood teachers the didactic of programming through the use of stories and simple materials is the focus of the paper. The first section is the introduction, the second section reviews the state of the art, the third section focuses on the didactic, the fourth section validates the didactic proposed, with the experience of teaching it for two years at the University and the results achieved (together with some sample stories created by the students and the related activities), and the fifth section ends the paper with the main conclusions and lines of future work.

Keywords:

Teaching Programming, Early Childhood Education, Stories.