Welcome to another new year of life! The new year is a great time to set new aspirations, new goals, and to learn some new things. As we have been going through our after-school coding clubs this year, we have had parents and guardians ask us how they can further not only their child’s coding potential but their knowledge as well. As the job market for programmers of all languages expands, learning to code, or growing your coding skills, is a great resolution to have this year. We have compiled a list of free resources readily available so you and your child can improve your coding skills in 2024!
Scratch Jr.
Scratch Jr. is a free app available for Apple and Android tablets that is geared towards pre-reader kids. Kids will put together graphical programming blocks to create interactive stories and games. As the blocks piece together, they are learning to code characters to move, jump, dance, and sing.
Scratch
Scratch is the big sibling of Scratch Jr. as it’s an easy-to-use programming language designed by MIT’s Media Lab. Kids choose from a variety of backgrounds and characters to create animations, games, and stories. Using Scratch blocks, you and your child can organize a sequence of commands to add additional sprites, move sprites, change backgrounds, add sound, and so much more! With tons of backgrounds, hundreds of sprites, and customizable blocks, the possibilities of what you can do in scratch are endless. Scratch is great for kids who know how to read and is readily available in over 150 countries.
Code Monster
Code Monster is a fun and free website that features an animated monster who guides kids to alter written code. When you open up the website, you’ll see two boxes, one displaying lines of code (input), the other displaying the code’s result (output). The monster’s text box will prompt you to change elements of the input code. As you alter the code, you will immediately see the result of the change in the output box and begin to internalize coding logic. The monster’s text box then offers an explanation as to what the code change affected, reinforcing the meaning and logic behind each line of code. Exercises are progressive and you can move through the games, they will understand more challenging concepts and build more complex output.
Blockly Games
Blockly Games is a website containing a series of block-based interactive games where you drag and drop blocks that you then can customize to implement a sequence of commands. As you and your child are making these sets of instructions, you are essentially writing code. The instructions given allows the user to see exactly what their code produced and make needed adjustments to reach their goal. There are multiple games with 10 levels each, allowing kids (and parents) to progress their coding skills and achieve different types of outputs.
Glitch
Glitch is an easy tool for creating web apps. They’re growing and streamlining developer tools, which makes it an ideal program for older kids and teens who are learning to code. Coding on Glitch is like working together in Google Docs–multiple people can work on the same project simultaneously. Students use simple, powerful tools to build their websites and alter projects from real-world languages and frameworks.
Youth Code Jam Youtube
You can always code along with us on our YouTube channel! We have several fun projects that we have uploaded to our channel over the years for coders of all levels. From Scratch to Python, you can find a variety of helpful videos to find out just how much the power of code can work in your favor.