How to teach basic university-level programming concepts to first graders?

In this paper, we present five different approaches of teaching 8-years-old children basic concepts of programming and fundamentals of computing. Using mechanical calculators, children learn some of the basic computer architecture and functionality concepts like the accumulator, counter and register shifting. The marble adding machine teaches binary number adding. Basics of procedural programming (chaining instructions, conditional statements, loops, variables) are taught using Lego WeDo or Mindstorms EV3 robots. The same concepts could be introduced by playing games developed for The hour of Code event. Event based programming can be learned by making the Kodu 3D game. Although those subjects can be quite abstract to grown-ups, through games and practical examples, children adopted the concepts very easily and quickly. We hope that our STEM activities will “awaken an engineer” in at least some of the attendants, and encourage them to enroll one of the STEM faculties at the University of Zagreb.