Python Fundamentals

Free · no account needed to read

Python is the language most schools and universities teach first, and it is a genuinely good first language for a child: the code reads close to English, and a working program can be three lines long.

This course goes from a first variable all the way to writing classes. Every concept is introduced by an animation that performs the exact sentence being spoken, set in a world the child chooses, so watching, listening and reading all carry the same explanation at the same moment.

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What your child will learn

  • Variables and what a computer remembers
  • print() and input()
  • Numbers, text, booleans and None
  • if / elif / else
  • for loops, while loops and nested loops
  • Lists, dictionaries, tuples and sets
  • Functions, parameters and return values
  • Errors, try/except and debugging
  • Classes, methods and self

How the course is organised

  1. Welcome to Python!
  2. Getting Started
  3. Data Types Deep Dive
  4. Making Decisions
  5. Loops
  6. Collections
  7. Functions
  8. Errors & Debugging
  9. Object-Oriented Basics

Read a lesson before you sign up

Full lessons from this course are readable here, with no account - the explanation, a worked example and the mistakes children usually make:

How the lessons work

Each lesson opens with the child’s own coding buddy explaining the idea. The explanation is spoken aloud, typed on screen and performed by an animation at the same time - the same sentence in all three, so a child who reads slowly can listen, and a child who is not reading at all can watch.

After the explanation come the practice games: spot the bug, predict the output, order the code, and a written challenge that runs the child’s real code and checks it.

Questions parents ask

Is Python a good first programming language for a child?

Yes. Python needs very little punctuation to get a working program, so a child spends their attention on the idea rather than on semicolons and brackets. It is also the language most commonly taught in schools, so it transfers directly to their classroom.

Does my child need to install anything to learn Python here?

No. The code runs in the browser, so there is nothing to download, install or configure.

How long does the Python course take?

The lessons are grouped into sessions. Most children do one short lesson at a time; a session is roughly an hour of focused work.

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