Guide: How to Teach Coding to your Kids using MIT Scratch Language
Most children learn best by doing, so coding courses for adults should be designed to allow them to use code to solve problems. However, most adult-oriented coding courses start with teaching building blocks such as data types, variables and functions. This method does not work well with most children because they learn best by doing. ..
Visual block languages offer a solution to this problem by introducing students to coding using visual building blocks. These languages focus on logic rather than syntax, and learn coding through creative projects. ..
There are a few great apps that teach block languages, such as Scratch, Code.org, and Tynker. These apps are available on the internet for free.
Scratch is a visual block language developed by Google and the MIT Media Lab. It’s designed to help kids learn programming, and it’s free to use.
Get started
Scratches is a programming language created for educational purposes, in which you must do that click blocks together to create various projects such as animations, games and interactive stories.
Scratch is a programming language designed for children and teenagers between 8 and 16 years old. It can also be used by younger children and adult learners. ..
Scratch is a computer program that allows users to create and share digital art. It is available in more than 40 languages, and the latest version is Scratch 2.0 which runs in more recent web browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. If you have problems with the system requirements, you can also use the earlier version, Scratch 1.4.
- Use it as a scratch pad to jot down ideas or thoughts.
- Use it as a way to communicate with others.
- Use it as a way to learn new information
To start a new project, click the Create menu in the top menu bar and select Scratch. The Scratch editor will appear on your screen. ..
Make the design
Design elements: -Wallpapers: We need to choose a wallpaper that will fit our program’s style and look. There are many options to choose from, but we’ll use one that is simple and easy to use. -Button: A button can be used as a shortcut or an entrance into a particular part of the program. It can also be used as a way to show off our design work to others. -Navigation: A navigation bar can help us navigate our program more easily. It can be placed at the top or bottom of the screen, and it can have different colors to indicate which parts of the program are relevant to us.
Scratch offers two different types of design elements: backgrounds and sprites. Backgrounds can be used to create a more polished look for your projects, while sprites are perfect for creating quick and easy animations. ..
The term “backdrop” stands for the background and the term “Sprite” stands for the characters (the default character is the cat you can see in the screenshot above). Their related settings are in the lower left corner, below the stage.
There are four ways to add a new background or Sprite on stage: from a predefined library, paint one, upload one from your computer or take a photo with your web camera.
I used the Backdrop library to create a wallpaper for my desktop.
To create a new Sprite in the game, click the small sprite icon next to the “New Sprite” label in the lower left corner of the screen. From there, you can choose one or more Sprites from the Sprite library. ..
If you want, you can add a new background and sprites to your work area using a handy one photo editor that automatically appears after you add a new design element.
After adding the “Night City” background to my stage, I could change the look of the background using the image editor’s drawing tools.
In this article, I’ll be one simple animation about a girl scared by a ghost in a night city. I already have the background of the night city and now I need two sprites: a girl and a ghost.
I don’t need the default cat so I right-click on it and delete it. I add the girl and the ghost from the Sprite library. Since the ghost is bigger than the girl and they look strange next to each other, I adjust the ghost size with the image editor. ..
I have all the design elements I need to create a stage for my play. Below you can see what my stage looks like now. In the next section we will discuss adding functionality to the two sprites using scratch pads.
Add functionality
The Scratch blocks which can be found under the Scripts tab are special blocks that can be used to scratch your own code snippets. There are one behind every block underlying code snippet.
Blocks are grouped into 10 categories (Motion, Appearance, Sound, Pen, Data, Events, Control, Detection, Operators, More blocks), each of them uses a different color. This makes it easy to distinguish the block groups.
We will add functionality to each Sprite (we will animate them specifically), meaning each Sprite will have its own sequence of Scratch blocks.
The sky is a deep blue, and the sun is a bright orange. The trees are in full leaf, and the ground is covered in snow.
The algorithm for our girl ghost program is as follows:
- Initialize the variables.
- Set up the sprite data structure.
- Create the sprite routine.
- Call the sprite routine.
The girl’s algorithm is written from the girl’s perspective, and the mind’s algorithm is written from the mind’s perspective. While one character acts, the other have to wait, as we need synchronize the actions of the two characters.
To start the program, we need to get the user to click on the green flag. We can do this simply by using the “When the green flag was clicked” block of the “Events” category.
After 2 seconds, the ghost waits for the girl to think. We programmed this action with the “Wait 2 seconds” block that can be found in the “Check” category.
Finally, the mind must approach the girl, which we can achieve with the “Go to Abby” block of the “Movement” category. “Abby” is the girl’s name, Scratch will automatically add the names of the other Sprites to the dropdown menu of this block.
This is what the ghost’s script looks like. By now you have definitely realized that Scratch works similar to LEGO, you have to join the blocks together.
To create a character in the game, you first need to click on the girl’s sprite in the lower left corner. This will open up a block-based interface where you can customize her behavior. ..
When the green flag was clicked, the girl’s script began. The girl’s script will end with the “When the red flag was clicked” block. I’ll now show you what the girl’s script will look like in the end, so you can more easily follow the explanation. ..
After clicking the green flag, the girl thinks for 2 seconds (the program shows a thinking bubble for this period), but the ghost waits in the corner – programmed with the waiting block in the ghost ghost script.
The girl has to wait for the ghost to touch her. She must add a diamond-shaped block to the waiting block in order to have the ghost touch her.
Remember Scratch is a programming game where you have to pay attention to the shapes of the blocks. This feature prevents you from adding blocks that shouldn’t be there, so you can avoid wrong coding logic.
Meanwhile, the ghost touched the girl and its script ended. Now we have to make her scream with a “Play sound” Sound block (I’ve added the female scream sound from the built-in sound library), and finally let her get away from the ghost through the Movement block “move 200 steps.”
The final project on the Scratch page of this website is a building block model of the city of Chicago. To view the building blocks, click on the See inside button in the upper right corner.
Next steps
Our example of “Ghost in the City” is a project that uses a simple coding structure. When your kids can create stories and animations using this structure, you can explore more complicated coding structures. For example, if you use conditional statements and loops, both can be found in the “Check” category.
If you want to see a more complicated example of a linear animation, I can show you my other demo features that uses three sprites and conditional statements.
You can also inspire your kids by printing Scratch cards for them, which they can hold in their hands during programming. These cards also have great project ideas on them, as well as helpful tips from other users. It’s also worth learning from others who are exploring existing projects or participating in discussion forums. ..
If you want to learn how to program in Scratch, there is a free course from the University of Edinburgh that is very accessible and even enjoyable.
The Scratch Wiki is a great resource for students who want to learn how to create digital art. The Department of Creative Computing has a variety of resources that can help students learn about digital art.
How to Teach Coding to your Kids using MIT Scratch Language: benefits
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Final note
This guide is for kids who want to learn how to code using MIT Scratch Language. If you have any questions about this article, or if you have any other queries, please don’t hesitate to ask us. Additionally, please share this article with your friends so that they can also benefit from it.
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