[alok-g]

Does anyone have any recommendations on at what minimum age should this be introduced to kids? The website recommends 8-16 years, but then I was doing real programming at the age of ten, so eight may not be the best answer. My son is five right now.

Introducing too early seems to have a downside that if my son does not like it (or cannot grasp it), he develops a negative feeling towards it like boredom or else, and then subconsciously does not want to return to it even at the right age.

[juliendorra]

During Coding Goûter sessions, kids as young as 5 have played and created things with Scratch 1.4 and loved the experience. They are begging to come back, and it becomes a very usual thing to do, which is exactly our goal.

(Note that we mix kids, with ages ranging from 5 to 14, and always a 50/50 ratio of girls/boys, not via quota but because of the way the events are planned. So we also have older kids. It's good for the younger ones.)

At this age, they (usually) don't read, so they generally are working with an adult and another kid, or in some instance with an older kid (my just 6 years old daughter for example worked one of the firs times with an older girl that knew Scratch.)

A very important thing to do is to let the creative direction to the kids. Don't force the programming of a shooter on them. They have lot of ideas, and they will be more motivated if the idea come from them. Also they will be proud to see it happen. They'll want to move things, animate, etc. They'll want to copy things they have seen. Letting them draw on paper, for example a character, then taking a picture and incorporating it in Scratch is a nice way to alternate between two different activities (solving the "will they focus for long?" question)

If you want to know more: http://codinggouter.org and my talk at FOSDEM: https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/coding_gouter/ may be helpful

[VonGuard]

8 is the right age. We teach dozens of 8 year olds. The basic principle is: if they can sit still for an hour or so, and concentrate, they can learn Scratch. If they're all over the place, forget bothering until they calm down.

[planckscnst]

You can show him that it's a paint program, then blow his mind one day when you can make his little characters say something and move around. Maybe have him make a ball one day and save it - when he's not around, go in there and add some gravity, momentum, friction, and elasticity. Later ask him to check out his ball sprite it should be pretty big surprise when you click the flag and the ball falls and bounces. My daughter loved just playing around with the painter.

[mzs]

My son and daughter at 4th and 5h grade were able to really take care of things by themselves almost entirely, my youngest son at 2nd grade needed a lot of help while mine craft is no trouble at all for him. Hope that helps.

[mudil]

My son will be 7 this month. We started Scratch probably 1.5 years ago. He loves it. Of course, I used to come up with projects and we did them together. But recently he started doing them himself.