Prior to the break, students at William O. Schaefer were “lighting up” their brains by developing their computational thinking skills while exploring Lightbot and other coding games/apps. Ask your child to explain algorithms and debugging, or procedures and loops! We have learned to use mistakes to drive our ability to problem solve.
Kindergarten and first grade students are moving on to connect their learning from coding with Lightbot to coding with Scratch Jr. Second graders are about to embark on a journey to explore Scratch. Both projects that were created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as part of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.
Click here to find out about Scratch Jr, designed for kids ages 5-7. Scratch Jr. is an app that can be downloaded for free for Apple devices here and for Android devices here. 
Click here to find out about Scratch, which is designed for kids ages 8 and up. It can be downloaded and used offline or an account can be created and used online. The parent resource page has lots of helpful information. Check out this video:
Click here to explore Scratch. What are some similarities and differences that you notice, as compared with Scratch Jr?
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