Educators & parents: You can do this Hour of Code Activity as a class or students can work on it independently. If you have any questions or need help, email info@codespeaklabs.com. For an easier Hour of Code activity in the same format (read aloud + ScratchJr tutorial), check out Coding Twinkle.
This Hour of Code activity is great for young pre-readers or early readers. First, they'll listen to a simple story and then do a coding activity on a tablet. Our story integrates real code using ScratchJr, a coding language that gets kids coding at an early age (ages 3-6) using colorful coding blocks.
We'll start with a story. You can get the viewable link to the Google Slides with the story here. (Shout-out to our students in The Next Step program who designed and illustrated the story!)
In the story, the main character Snake eats an apple and gets bigger. This is what students can then animate on their tablets.
After reading the story, distribute the tablets to your students that have the ScratchJr app installed on it. ScratchJr is a FREE app you can download on any tablet or phone.
Download the free ScratchJr app onto each of your classroom iPads or Android tablets here:
Slides 15 and 17 have all the code you need for the project. Feel free to make adjustments! Depending on where the apple is relative to the snake in a student's project, they may need different blue movement blocks to make sure the 2 sprites touch, which then activates the other code.
If you liked this story, we also have other coding related stories for kids. Check out our read aloud of "Let's Play with the ScratchJr Kitten."
And, we have many more coding tutorials for all levels Grades PK-12 at https://www.youtube.com/c/CodeSpeakLabs