How to keep the kids entertained during the summer holidays

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Typically, the heatwave of early summer has disappeared just in time for the school holidays. But if you’re scratching around for something to do with the kids on a rainy day why not try, well, Scratch.

Scratch is a brilliantly simple programming language designed for kids. Instead of relying on lines of intimidating code, it uses a colourful, building-block style interface to introduce children to the basic computational concepts.

We’ve written a Scratch tutorial as part of our Give Your Kids the IT Edge feature in this month’s magazine (on sale now). Our tutorial shows you how to make your child the star of their very own computer game, in which they have to try and escape from a crab that keeps nipping at its toes. Your child does everything from programming the movements of the characters, to recording sound effects, to creating the scoreboard. Best of all, the software is completely free – just download it from the Scratch website.

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