Holiday Help through SCRATCHing

A Logical, sequential, step by step method to achieve a goal. Options to involve music and sound and a variety of fun characters to play with. Cool animations, loads of effects and a chance to let your imagination go wild! 

That's Scratch programming for you! 

With their never-ending supply of energy and an orthogonal thought process, it is vital to get the middle schoolers engaged during the holidays. Keeping them safe from the clutches of the mobile phone and social media is even more of a priority. Although a healthy sport in the playground would serve them well, a programming tool to let loose their imagination seems to a safe bet, inspite of the added screen time. 

Scratch is a programming tool developed by the good fellows at MIT, which has been around for quite a long time. The newly upgraded scratch is user-friendly and very easy to use. A middleschooler would master it in a jiffy. Even if they have a hurdle, the super short, specific tutorials just make it so much easier to get them to do what they want to do. 

Scratch teaches Problem Solving tactics. The middleschooler needs to first define an idea, look at the operations available and solve the problem using the given options. Embellishing it and making it awesome comes next! Even if there are roadblocks along the way, the debug tool on Scratch helps! 

Scratch teaches them Patience- a value that this generation seems to be losing out on with their instant gratification needs. Starting out with a character, it is easy enough to see what it can do, but it requires patience and logical reasoning to get it to actually do it. 

Any programming language needs the user to be logical in their approach to the solution to the problem. The middleschoolers can make fantastic outcomes with a logical start. 

Sharing their work for the world to see is something that the children will surely enjoy, while boosting their confidence. 

Getting into the mindset of logical programming with its problem solving tactics is a good option to get the children into this vacation, during those sunny afternoons when the phone can be "lost" :)

Here's a good place to start: https://scratch.mit.edu/mystuff/