has anyone else used 'scratch' kids computer programming thingie?

[gameface]

note my not-very-technical terminology there?!

i usually come on here looking for advice so i thought i'd give back for one

just giving people the heads-up really, coz we were looking for something fun to do out of school with our 8 year old. he's into computer games bigtime and my partner is a computer programmer so he looked around to see what was out there to show our son how to do it.

he found a great program called 'scratch' somewhere which is quite a gentle way into programming for kids but does get them using a lot of logic skills, and i think you can make things as easy/ difficult as your kids need(within reason)... plus they get to see results of little animations moving around the screen.

as far as i know this was a free program he got somewhere... sorry i'm being so vague, i'm the arty one i the house! but i just thought i'd mention that our son loved it in case there are others with kids of a similar age (or 3 year olds with superspecial abilities!), looking to find things to stretch AND entertain their offspring...

if this isn't enough info and anyone is interested just pop a note below and i'll try to find more info on how/ where he got the program from

Ds used it when he was starting programming. He liked it too.

scratch

DS has been using scratch for the last couple of years - he's 10 now.

He found it via a friend, and they frequently program together - and last year showed the results to the rest of the class at school via interactive whiteboard. His teacher last Year was IT coordinator for the school, and she encouraged them, and did some programming herself

so, I agree, great free resource!

Oh yes, it's fab. I think my boys first came across it at a workshop at the Edinburgh Science Festival. They have great fun with it.

cool, glad you guys like it too. if your kids have been using it for a while is there anything else you would recommend for like-minded children? maybe there's stuff we don't know about...

I haven't checked it out myself but on another thread someone mentioned a free download called microsoft smallbasic, or something like that? might be worth a look.

cool, thanks, will check it out!