ScratchJr

Sep 4, 2014

IrishCyborg is here to tell you about his latest find.

Before I tell you anything about ScratchJr, I would like to clear up last Tuesday’s post. The video shown is a fake! It never happened! It’s all video edited! Really! I was the calmest, and least bold child you could wish for! IrishDoom, on the other hand, was the worst child ever, and he should have let me in that car! Oops! Ignore the previous sentence!

Anyway, I really like to code, when I’m not trying to get into other people’s cars, and I especially like to code in Scratch. When I heard that ScratchJr was being released on the iPad, and that it was free, I naturally wanted to check it out. ScratchJr is like Scratch, only easier, if that’s possible. It is aimed at 5 to 7 year olds. Although I am 13, (my birthday was last week, Whoo-hoo!), I still enjoyed ScratchJr.

In both Scratch and ScratchJr you drag blocks around to code, and everything is sorted into sprites (pictures with code). ScratchJr is a lot simpler and easier to use than Scratch, so ideal for the younger crowd. There are no words written on the blocks which you drag out to code in ScratchJr, but the pictures are easy enough to understand. One big difference between the two is that ScratchJr has pages, and each page is like a whole different program. Each page has different sprites and it’s own background. The differences between the two Scratches are quite major, and the biggest difference is the fact that they’re on separate platforms; iPad and computer.

If you have a look around you should be able to figure everything out. ScratchJr is pretty easy to understand, and if you let your child just play around with it, they’ll probably know what to do. If they can’t, there is a help button in the top right corner.

Watch the video below to see the example project I did.