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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

Learning to code

12 replies

tricot39 · 30/07/2015 06:56

hi
Any ideas on resources for young children teaching themselves to code? Or write Apps? We saw the article on the news about the recent Festival of Code and DS was interested but I wouldn't know where to start beyond Kodu Game lab? Thanks

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sunnydayinmay · 30/07/2015 07:35

Our school uses Scratch. My boys love it, and use it at home too.

mrz · 30/07/2015 08:08

We use Scratch and Scratch junior

mrz · 30/07/2015 08:10

www.barclays.co.uk/DigitalEagles/BarclaysCodePlayground/P1242686640999 I've not used it but some parents find it useful

user789653241 · 30/07/2015 09:13

My ds loves scratch. He also does coding on Khan Academy. KA seems more advanced, but has a lot more freedom and teaches HTML,CSS,JS.
He is hooked on it now.

GoodArvo · 30/07/2015 14:05

You can download Scratch for free from the Scratch website. We also got a book called Scratch Programming Adventure, which shows step by step how to write particular games.

My boys have also used Kodu. They were also lucky to have a very good Code Club at their primary school.

RueDeWakening · 30/07/2015 21:30

We use Scratch, it's an online thing now (Scratch 2.0) although we used the downloadable Scratch 1.4 (I think!) previously.

DD (age 8) is working her way through this book which is excellent and I'd really recommend it. Here is an example of something she did the other day which is based on a project in the book - I can only apologise for all the !!! it contains... :o

Madcats · 30/07/2015 21:53

Scratch is worth a look (though do get hold of some "projects" from a website initially to learn a few basics). We also have the downloaded app.

I'm sure I read (on Mumsnet) about kids using scratch to bypass age filters at school, so be conscious that it isn't just about making little cartoon characters do stuff.

Somewhat unrelated, but I signed my daughter up to an Apple Summercamp this week (3x90 minutes of iMovie or iBook in a local store free of charge). We'd done zero prep, but I think there might be a few proud parents at their little film who tomorrow.

WombatStewForTea · 31/07/2015 22:53

I was going to suggest the barclays one or scratch. The other one I love is kodu. It uses visual/cause and effect coding rather than coding language but is a great introduction.

mais · 31/07/2015 23:00

Try code.org and also check out if there's a CoderDojo Club near you, it's a free volunteer led coding club for children and young adults.

Original poster

tricot39 · 01/08/2015 12:27

Thanks for all the suggestions! Code dojo sounds great and I will check out Scratch

OP posts:

mrz · 03/08/2015 13:53

www.kidscodecs.com/

PKD2000 · 27/07/2016 12:52

I'd like to recommend Mama.codes who provide lots of creative coding projects for kids using the scratch junior app. My 8 year old loves it but there are also projects that older and younger kids can access too. I am a SEN specialist tutor and I have also used it very successfully with young students who are delayed or have learning difficulties.

mama.codes/

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