This cute little book is designed for the smallest potential coders. Without a keyboard or touchscreen in sight, children learn, among other things, the principles of breaking down a large task into bite (or should that be byte?) sized pieces, laying out a plan, and hunting for bugs.

You can teach even the youngest of kiddos the essential ideas and skills behind coding without ever having to go near a computer or electronic device of any kind.

Instead, this fabulous board book is full of lifting the flap, spin the wheel, and move the slider type puzzles that your children will enjoy, without ever realising they are learning about sequences, algorithms, and debugging.

This page of Jungle Escape is one of Gabriel’s favourites. He enjoyed moving the sliders to guide the explorer so much; I made several sets of little squares, the same size as those of the puzzle in the book.

Now we sit together, and I use our set of squares to cover some obstacles and add others, and Gabriel gets to continue challenging and strengthening his planning and problem identification skills

We have several other games, created using the techniques in My First Coding Book, and, even if he never types a single piece of code, Gabriel has definitely benefitted from having this book in our home

Not only that, if you, or someone you know,  are a bit of a Luddite, you donèt need to have an age in single digits to learn something valuable from this My First Coding Book.

Moms Verdict

A definite winner on a number of fronts. Although the book is designed to teach coding skills those concepts are also transferable to other situations. The concept of planning how you are going to get from A to Z, then identifying potential obstacles and working on ways to address those problems if they crop up, is an invaluable life-skill. 

The “lift the flap” style is perfect for a learner like Gabe, who enjoys interacting with his books, while the sturdy nature of the book means it has lasted through several months of hard reading and playing.

I’ll try to write a post soon detailing all of the additional games and activities we developed around the book, complete with instructions and PDFs so you can make or print your own, so watch this space.

Book Details

My First Coding Book, Board book, by By Kiki Prottsman, Published by Dorling  Publishers description

  • ISBN: 9781465459732
  • Size: 215.9 x 276.225mm
  • Pages: 24
  • Published: 03 Jul 2017
  • RRP: $20.99 CAD

Disclosure: I received the item(s) featured in this article for free in exchange for a review on this site. I only recommend products I personally use or would be happy to use and believe would be suitable for my readers. All opinions are my own, and the points of view in this post were not influenced in any way by the sponsor.