Lance Wicks
Kiwi,
Judoka,
Geek,
Husband
Daddy!

JudoGeek Blog

Sharing the joy of geek with my children. 

From time to time I look at programming languages and environments for kids. One I found and recently have taken a liking to is Scratch.

Scratch is a project of the brilliantly named 'The Lifelong Kindergarten research group" at MIT. Scratch is a visual programming language aimed at children 8+ years old.

Anyway, last week my daughter was off ill from school, so I decided to to take a look and see how she got on. The short is that it is still a while off before she (or her brother) will be able to use it fully on their own.

However, with me doing the majority of the operating my daughter had a great time doing the design work. Think of it as extreme programming with a five year old. She designed two things, a game for her brother and also a story/animation.

Given the positive response, I tried it with her brother and he loves telling daddy what things to make the games do. They both love the seeing their ideas come to life.

It was fantastic to share some geekery with the kids. Scratch is really powerful and I am seeing opportunities to use it as a coaching tool ( http://www.judocoach.com/blog/index.php ... 214-093252 ).

Anyway... do check out the project. And also please enjoy the animation my daughter made and I have included below:

Learn more about this project

Lastly, watching the kids get so much pleasure from seeing their own names in games is an amazing experience and one to be honest I remember enjoying, but at a much older age!
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