Scratch 3: My daughters are taking a Harvard course 😱

Capucine (11) and Clotilde (8) have finally come back to me, ready to seriously learn how to code!

We had previously started exploring Scratch, thanks to the excellent manual that comes with the Raspberry Pi 400, but their interest quickly faded.

But Clotilde, who wants to become an “ingenieuse” (yes, she’s not pretending when it comes to feminizing job titles), decided that at 9 years old, it might already be a bit late to get serious about programming — oh, the joy of seeing stars in your daughter’s eyes when you tell her that after Scratch, we'll move on to Python!

By chance — thanks, Donald — I received a list of courses made freely available online by Harvard University. Among them was a Scratch introduction course that seemed extremely thorough: no need to think twice, the two eldest will be following a course from an Ivy League university — let’s not deny ourselves the pleasure...

The first lesson doesn’t dive into code at all, but focuses instead on the settings and properties of Sprites, the stage, etc. It’s already quite dense, and informative enough to make for a full session with both girls. They then took the information and internalized it playfully, creating their own scenes and sprite arrangements.

Even better, they already asked me when the next session will be! Stay tuned...