Its National Science Week. Let’s Try Something New (For All Ages)…

Its that time of the year again… National Science Week. If you are like us, a bit time poor to get yourself out to the activities out there, we’ve got a few suggestions to try at home.

Best of all all you need is a computer/mobile device. If you don’t like it, just delete it.

Most of the them are free so there is no excuse!

Kinder – Primary school

Bits Box (Try Mode)

https://bitsbox.com/

Technically a paid monthly coding subscription activity box. However you can try a handful of apps to see whether your child will like it. To access the try area, click on “Kids Sign In” on the main page. Then “Get Started”. At which point a tablet will come up on screen and there is an option for “Here the First Time?”, click “Let’s Go”. This will then allow you to try 5 apps for free.

Scratch Junior

https://www.scratchjr.org/

Developed by a consortium of educational institution (including MIT) and private companies. Its a free app designed for 5-7 year olds in basic block programming. Providing ability to drag and drop commands with its bright attractive colour, it allows kids to start exploring the logic of coding. The good thing is it is supported by lots of community activities, so if you ever get stuck one google search or looking up nearest event will get you up and going again.

Late Primary School – High School

Scratch

https://scratch.mit.edu/

The original children coding teaching tool. It offers block based programming, but also extend these by having ability for advance functions like variables, defining complex logic. Great extension tool once kids get sick of Scratch Junior. Only available online, it does have an offline mode allowing you to work on projects even when there is no internet.

Also have a large community where you can peek inside other people programs. It does require sign up to save your projects, so parental supervision is still advised.

Alice

http://www.alice.org

Created by Carnegie Mellon University, Alice is a whole package that teaches older kids how to program in order to produce an animation. This gives 2 sets of skills (programming and animation) in one go. It does require a bit more knowledge to setup, as it provides more options to customise to what you want to use the software for.

However once you setup you can have fun all day long creating life like animation shorts like a pro.

Happy Coding!!!

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