Update on 9 Year Old Girl Learning Python

March 5th and 6th, 2014

Lessons focused on using blit to get a graphic of a girl onto the screen instead of a rectangle.  The lessons went smoothly.  I was surprised that she wasn't as excited about the graphic as I had thought she was going to be.  The standard rectangle may be sufficient to keep her attention.

She's still having challenges with manipulating the mouse for copy and paste techniques.  Her use of the keyboard is improving.

I realized that the use of pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() to control onscreen graphics is easier than using the keyboard and then manipulating  x +=1 , y +=1 to move the rectangle around the screen.

Other tasks she accomplished:

• created map background with Tiled map editor.  Began to learn about game tiles.  The map background does not have collision detection.  It is just one image that is blitted to the screen.
• basics of map layers and graphic layers

March 9, 2014

I'm starting to learn more about her personality based on what graphics and sounds she chooses.  A big part of the lessons is the experience of a father/daughter bonding activity.  In a way, it doesn't matter if she learns programming or not.  Though, it is gratifying that she is interested in the activity and seems to have a knack for it.

Mouse manipulation and typing ability are vastly improved.  I'm shocked at how fast she's learning things, including the physical skill of typing.  If I didn't actually see a kid this age use PyCharm, I wouldn't believe that it was possible.  As I don't have another 9 year old kid to experiment with, I am assuming that she is typical and am using her as the baseline with only one data point.

Topics covered:

• Use of gimp to edit graphic files.  
• Add alpha transparency layer to graphics by using magic select and deleting the background.  
• Scale image to fit on screen.  Learn more about pixel size for both image and screen.
• Use of audacity to record and edit sound files
• Load sound files with mixer.Sound()
• Play sound files with name.play()
• Collision detection with rect.collidepoint(pos)
• I loaded the game on an Android phone for her so that she can see how easy it is to create these game on a mobile device.  She seemed to favor the desktop.  She's too young to use a mobile phone and doesn't have too much experience using them.

Video with sounds.

Game running on Android phone.

The code that the 9 year old girl wrote in PyCharm is shown below. Note that she starts with a completely blank editor screen at the start of each lesson. This means that she's repeated typing in the exact same base code from lesson 2 five times so far and has typed in the base code from lesson 1 an additional five times. I've started to modify the lesson so that she can extend the base code of lesson 2 to do what she wants.  It is important to note that up to this point, she has not used any math.  There are no addition or subtraction formulas.

The primary mathematical concept so far is for her to understand which of two numbers are greater than the other.  I am purposely using a screen that is 480 x 320 so that she can deal with manageable numbers, keeping integers under 1,000.

In the example below, she just needs to understand the following:

• screen is 320 pixels high and 480 pixels wide
• the middle point of the height is 160 pixels
• the middle point of the width is 240
• if the she wants the heart, zebra, and chipmunk to be at the same height, the center y coordinates need to all be 160 pixels down from the top of the screen
• making the x axis smaller moves things to the left (note that be aware that the child may not know left and right.  Take this into account in your teaching.  Point to the appropriate direction if needed).
• making the x axis larger moves things to the right (IMO, still too early for addition at this lesson.  Just use a single point.  In this case, heart, zebra, chipmunk)
• similar concept to for the y axis
• variable is used to hold the image after loading (handle)
• variable is used to hold the sound after loading (handle)
• once the image and sound are loaded, she can use the asset handle to make it do things like display to the screen or play the sound
• collision detection is used to trigger an action.

There's quite a bit of concepts here.  I suggest repeating these concepts multiple times before extending it to addition and subtraction.