If you think you might have a future programmer on your hands, it’s time to introduce your kid to Scratch. It’s a programming language that teaches the concepts of programming to young kids while making it easy for them to create animations, games, and more, then share them all with friends online. A new book from No Starch Press, Super Scratch Programming Adventure!: Learn to Program By Making Cool Games
Scratch was created at MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group. It’s targeted at ages eight and up, although my six-year-old finds it to be a lot of fun. If your child can read, understand numbers, and control a mouse, he can probably get started with Scratch, particularly if he’s used creative software like drawing programs. Younger children just may need a little more help than the older ones. To create programs in Scratch, you simply drag and drop colored puzzle-piece blocks of code written in simple language, snap them together, then change the variables:
Super Scratch Programming Adventure! helps your budding developer learn to use Scratch with a comic book story. Each section begins with a continuing piece of a story that ends by giving the reader a problem to solve with Scratch. Along the way, kids learn about software-building terms like “sprite,” “loop,” and “variable.” At the end of the book, they are rewarded with the fruits of their own creation, a game they can play knowing they made it themselves.
The best part about using Scratch is the wide range of skills that are involved, from the left-brain creativity to the right-brain reasoning. It also encourages sharing, collaborating, and learning from others–all additional non-programming skills useful in the programmer’s world.
Super Scratch Programming Adventure! was written by the LEAD Project (Learning through Engineering, Art and Design), which began in 2005 as a collaboration among The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, the MIT Media Lab, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
I received a copy of this book for review.
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