Miss having Code Club at WPPL? You can still access the same software at home! Google CS First, designed for ages 9-14, is available here. (If you went to Code Club here before and forgot your username and password, or if you want the class code, you can contact us. For those who haven’t used Google CS First before, you can try the curriculum on your own).
You’ll see One-Hour Activities to get beginners started, with subjects like Characterization, Interactive Presentation, Dialogue, Narration, and Figurative Language. Hour of Code projects include Code Your Hero, Pitch Your Passion, An Unusual Discovery, Animate a Name, Create Your Own Google Logo, Adventure on the High Seas, and Gumball’s Coding Adeventure. All activities use Scratch, a browser-based, block-based visual programming language from MIT Media Labs that’s easy to learn and use.
Multi-Day Activities come in three levels: Introductory (which includes activities such as Storytelling and Music & Sound); Intermediate (Friends, Fashion & Design, and Art); and Advanced (Sports and Game Design).
For ages 5-7, there’s Scratch Jr., which can be installed on tablets.
For advanced users who want to learn text-based coding, there’s Khan Academy’s Computer Programming. You can either do the lessons on your own or create an account, which will save your progress (if you had an account before and forgot your password, you can reset it).
Other websites that teach coding for free, and weren’t used in Code Club, include Code.org (different levels for K-12 students available) and other websites mentioned in the free section of CodeWizardsHQ here (sorted by grade level).
You can also check out books and eBooks on coding from Westlake Porter Public Library’s catalog. There’s books for kids as well as adults (or older kids who’d like to learn more real-life coding!)
