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Saturday, September 1, 2018

Free Online Coding with Scratch



Technology has been a weakness of mine, so it of course became an insecurity when homeschooling. We all are afraid about educational gaps, and I didn't want technology to be ours.

Coding was already on my radar, but I had no where to begin!!! A program at our local library led me to a free online coding program through MIT. My kids have been using Scratch, along with the workbooks mentioned below, have taught my kids SO much a about coding and graphic design!

My twins are making a movie this summer and when I logged into my movie editing software, I didn't even have to teach them how to use it due to the skills they had learned designing and working on Scratch!


INFO ABOUT SCRATCH FREE ONLINE:
Visit http://scratch.mit.edu and click "join scratch" to create an account with username and password. You'll need an email address too, but thankfully I could use the same email for both of my children's accounts.

It works on computers that have Windows, Mac, or Linux. I have a very old computer, still running Windows Vista, and using Scratch online worked for us.




HOW-TO WORKBOOKS
We have used several workbooks, but the two major winners were ones that my kids BEGGED me to get for our home library:



Coding Scratch in Workbook
This is a must have introduction to Scratch AND IS ONLY $6.00! It is simple and short, but sets the child up to begin working in Scratch with easy to read step-by-step instructions.   The beauty is I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CODING, and this simple inexpensive workbook walked them through every step to get started with the basics! 





Coding Projects in Scratch
After a few days of familiarizing themselves with scratch using the workbook above, my boys absolutely devoured Coding Projects in Scratch book. They were begging for coding time. They were so excited about these step by step instructions, I gave them much more time than usual on the computer for a few days.



Coding Projects in Scratch

 I hope this helps someone else get their children started on coding! Don't be scared.  Scratch is very simple into to coding for kids!




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