Matthew Highland - Coding for Kids: Scratch: Learn Coding Skills, Create 10 Fun Games, and Master Scratch

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Interior and Designer: Merideth Harte

Art Producer: Sara Feinstein

Editor: Susan Randol

Production Editor: Andrew Yackira

Illustrations: 2019 Amir Abou Roumi

courtesy of C.K. Huntington

ISBN: Print 978-1-64152-245-8 | eBook 978-1-64152-246-5

Does your child love playing video games? Wouldnt it be nice if you could harness that passion and set your child on a path for future career success in computer programming?

While I was an elementary school teacher in Silicon Valley, I got caught up in the tech culture: so much so that it became difficult for me to focus only on teaching when all around me entrepreneurs were launching billion-dollar companies. I quickly fell in love with the start-up culture, coding, and building websites.

In August 2014, my nine-year-old son said, Dad, I want to code like you, and that was the lightbulb momentI needed to build a coding school for kids! And so, Hackingtons was born.

For the past five years, Ive taught programming to kids at Hacking-tons Code School for Kids. Of all the wonderful experiences Ive had, none is as empowering as watching a student use Scratch for the first time. And now Im happy to deliver this instruction to kids around the worldthrough this book!

Coding for Kids: Scratch is an easy-to-understand introduction to both programming and video game development using Scratch, a popular online coding environment for kids. delivers awesome games to buildsome inspired by arcade classics. This book will teach your child just how fun, useful, creative, and empowering computer coding can be.

Coding is a blast to learn, especially when you are building video games. For younger children (ages 68), I recommend that parents sit with their child and help them navigate the beginning concepts until they are confident enough to use Scratch alone.

Your child will certainly have fun as Coding for Kids: Scratch helps them create video games, but the long-term benefits of learning to code are much further-reaching than gaming. And dont be surprised if you, as a parent, suddenly find yourself interested in a career in computer programming!

Hey, kids! Are you ready to build your own video games? Its really fun and easy to build video games with Scratch. What is Scratch? Its a website that allows you to build and launch video games to the web for the world to play. Yes, all of your friends and family members will be able to play the video games you make! And, to make it even better, you dont even need typing skills! Scratch uses drag-n-drop codingjust click and drag with your computer mouse to build your games.

Let me introduce myself. I started my career as an elementary school teacher in Silicon Valley, which is a very famous place for video games and technology because it is where companies like Atari and Apple started.

Being around all this exciting technology was contagiousin fact, I fell in love with coding and building websites myself.

A few years ago, my nine-year-old son said, Dad, I want to code like you, and thats when it clickedkids want to code, too! All they need is a place to learn. So I started Hackingtons Code School for Kids.

For the past five years, Ive taught programming to kids at Hackingtons Code School for Kids. Its awesome to watch students just like you use Scratch for the first time. I wish I could see your smile when you launch your first game. Coding is really powerful, and Im excited to help you learn it!

Are you wondering what you will need to begin this journey? Well, if you have this book, then youre already halfway there. All you need now is a computer or tablet with Internet access.

You may wonder, what is programming? Programming, also known as coding , is putting ideas into a form that the computer can understand. Scratch lets you express your ideas using pictures. Other ways for people to program usually involve typing words on a keyboard. But Scratch does the work for you by turning the pictures you create into those words!

There are many computer coding languages in the world. Maybe you have heard of some of themPython, JavaScript, C++, Java, Rubybut guess what? Scratch holds a unique place in the world of coding because it was designed by researchers at MIT specifically for kids to build video games .

Yes, we are going to build actual video games. But dont worry, we will start with steps as simple as one line of code, then slowly progress towards coding complete games.