In recent years there has been a proliferation of educational apps and games, full of flashy graphics and engaging music, for young children.
But many of these educational apps have been frustrating for parents and teachers.
The problem: very few educational apps provide young children with opportunities to design, create, and express themselves. That’s what motivated us to create Scratch Jr.
What Is Scratch Jr?
Scratch Jr is an introductory programming language that encourages creativity and expression, enabling five- to seven-year-old children to create their own interactive projects through coding, as it is often called these days.
Using Scratch Jr, children can snap together programming blocks to make characters move, jump, dance, and sing.
They can modify how their characters look, design their own back- grounds, add their own voices and sounds and even photos of themselves—and then use the programming blocks to bring their characters to life.
Scratch Jr was inspired by the popular Scratch programming language, used by millions of young people (ages eight and up) around the world. We redesigned the interface and programming language to make it developmentally appropriate, as well as fun and engaging, for younger children.
Based on feedback from children, parents, and teachers, we went through dozens of prototypes for Scratch Jr to make it as effective as possible for its purpose. We hope that you find it a useful tool for engaging children.
