Book Review: Yash And Yashika Learn About Coding

'Yash and Yashika Learn about Coding' is a story cum activity book on coding for young children aged between 4 to 6. Steve Jobs said, 'Everyone should learn how to code, it teaches you to think.' Dr Swati Popat Vats, world's leading early childhood education expert and publisher Scholastic, agrees.

Their latest book titled Yash and Yashika Learn about Coding is a story cum activity book on coding for young children aged between 4 to 6. Colourfully illustrated and sequentially structured, the book is a tool for parents to spend time with their kids. That too, without any screen time. "Children are usually put straightaway before the computer screen to learn coding.

Further, our education system turns their brain into a memory box via rote learning. It's time we changed this; some foundational knowledge is useful before putting the children in front of a screen. This preparation must start in an analog form- we must first allow children to understand coding as a way of life. The book converts everyday activities into sequences, instructions. For eg; when we teach children the steps of a task or rules to follow, we are teaching them about ALGORITHMS," explains Dr Swati Popat Vats.

The engaging plot goes thus- Yash and Yashika's mother, who is a coder, introduces them to a dancing robot, Mr. Bot. They enjoy watching Mr. Bot sing, dance, kick a ball and tell stories. Initially, they believe that Mr. Bot is a magical creature! Their mother explains that it's not magic; he has a computer inside him. This sparks the curiosity of the kids and the story takes the reader on a delightful journey that emphasizes 'how to learn, not what to learn.' Dr Swati Popat Vats has been working on the book since 2017.

The idea emerged from work to develop a coding curriculum for Podar Jumbo Kids, a preschool chain. She has designed the world's first curriculum for coding for early years and over 45,000 children are presently using it at 500 Podar Jumbo Kids kindergartens! She has included activities like Froebel gifts, readiness games, listening and instruction games and puppetry to help children learn how to think computationally. That's when she realised that coding isn't only related to computers. It is much beyond that. "Parenting and coding, both have an 'if-then' approach," adds Dr Swati Popat Vats. "The objective is to give children's brains a challenge and have them understand that every choice they make comes with its own consequences." Scholastic spokesperson says, "Dr Vats is a prolific author and one of the world's foremost experts on parenting and hence we are proud to publish her wisdom for our readers. This book will help parents understand children's need for play and tinkering and how this can be connected to later computational thinking skills. "

To sum up, the book focuses on educating the kids who are 'digital natives' about computational thinking and technology literacy, as they 'deserve a chance to become creators instead of consumers of computer science' to echo Maria Klawe's famous words. The story has an interesting character, Mr. Bot who is a dancing robot built by Yash and Yashika's mother who is a computer coder by profession. Yash and Yashika think it is a magical creature but later their mother takes them on coding quests with Mr. Bot where they learn how to program the computer inside the robot. It is an engaging book that allows kids to learn pre-coding terms like sequencing, code, loop, if-then conditionals, debug and algorithms: all through everyday play activities.