I believe that the programming skill is essential for life in the 21st century.
Does it give children an advantage for employment when they get older? Does it make children think logically? Yes! moreover, parents hope their kids to be able to understand what is wrong when they get problems with devices such as smartphones or computers and slave consumers of profit-focusing-and-making-kids-to-spend-more-money kind of game application developer. Needless to say, definitely not the ones under AI (Artificial Intelligent) management. Here is the very simple tip for understanding how the computer works!
Learn programming using SCRATCH
SCRATCH is the easiest programming language as far as I know. Even elementary school students can code a game using a blook-like interface. They don't have to care about spells of programing language but can focus on the concept of programming. It's very easy to make a game by SCRATCH with cute characters and easy commands to control. So kids make a video game and play it themselves at the end of class. Such a fun and Interesting way of learning!
SCRATCH has been developed by the special project team of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab. And the important thing for parents is, it's available for free! It works on the Web browser, so you don't have to install an application to your computer or mobile device.
Example of programming
The top image is a screenshot of a game, named "Run After it", programmed by my daughter when she was in elementary school. A cat, you control, chase a tennis ball and a star which move randomly. You will get a point when the cat touches the ball or star. The left side of the image shows almost the entire coding of this game. It took 1-2 hours to make it.
