Wakato Academy

Programming for Kids

I've been looking for some tools to teach programming to my 9 yr old.  This has been quit a journey, there just isn't a lot out there for his age group to get him started but he really wants to start.  Today I came across a great FREE program called Scratch.  It was developed at MIT and uses drag and drop technology similiar the Lego Mindstorms Programming Platform.  Kids can use it to begin to get a basic understanding of how programming works and start building some of there own stuff.  The great part is its not online, you actually download it so they can get one whenever they have time to work on it.  I can see a ton of great applications for this including illustrating stories and just being creative.  I am really excited that I found this resource for my son.  I am still looking for some more in depth stuff to further his understanding of computer programming but for now he'll have a lot of fun playing and creating some of his own programs with this.

If you want to check it out its at http://scratch.mit.edu