

Younger children just may need a little more help than the older ones. 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.


It’s targeted at ages eight and up, although my six-year-old finds it to be a lot of fun. Scratch was created at MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group. A new book from No Starch Press, Super Scratch Programming Adventure!: Learn to Program By Making Cool Games makes it even easier to get started. 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. If you think you might have a future programmer on your hands, it’s time to introduce your kid to Scratch.
