The Programming Language for Kids
Nowadays it’s relevant to grow kids which have at least basic knowledge in programming. Scratch is a visual, drag-and-drop introduction to programming for kids. Coding improves problem-solving skills, promotes analytical thinking, and fosters creativity.
Why Should Our Kids Learn to Program?
The very act of learning to program is a worthwhile discipline. Children especially benefit from the repeated experience of taking an idea and producing a finished program. It requires and improves many desirable skills. The idea phase itself requires planning and creativity. The implementation phase requires understanding the programming language, the logical one piece-by-piece arrangement of the code, and the methodical and analytical debugging of the program.
As you develop your skills, programming continues to stretch you. There’s always another idea or project you can strive for. And like most learned skills, the earlier you start the better. But making programming engaging and appealing for young minds isn’t as easy as simply making them sit in front of the screen.
To capture the imagination of young children you need to make things fun. Whatever it is, it has to look like a journey they want to be involved in. Scratch is a perfect solution for this. It’s a very high-level programming language, so getting things done quickly is easy. It’s mostly drag-and-drop, so there’s little chance of a typo causing a failure.
Registering a Scratch Account
Scratch is a platform for creating programs and also for sharing them. To get started, visit the Scratch online platform and register for a new account. Registering allows you to store your projects online and return to them later. Looking through other programmers’ code is a great way to learn as well.
Scratch lets registered users share their projects, so by registering you’re getting access to all of the shared projects on the platform. There are more than 82 million projects shared by over 74 million users, making it a valuable reference resource for those who wants to start learning programming from a scratch.
When you register a new account you’ll be asked to create a username and password, and to complete some other fields such as an email address. You need to verify your email address to complete your account creation. Once that’s complete, your child can begin their programming journey.
How to Get Started With Scratch
Scratch programs feature characters called sprites. Programs act on sprites, allowing you to move sprites, attach sounds to actions, and create speech bubbles. To give you a feel for programming with Scratch, let’s walk through the process of creating a small game in Scratch. It will seem like a long and complex process on paper, but your child will quickly start cruising through the intuitive process. Eventually the kid will fall in love with the programming