The students in Ms. Burnette’s 1st grade class at Jackson Davis have been learning about the Earth, moon, and sun. Today we did small group rotations in which they used Scratch Jr. to code these objects in our solar system to talk and move. Scratch Jr. is an iPad app with similar blocks to the web-based Scratch program, but there are less blocks to choose from and large picture icons rather than being text heavy. It’s very easy for even the youngest coders to navigate.

The first group added the background, selected the Earth and moon sprites, recorded their voice, and programmed the Earth and Moon to talk and move when touched.

The second group added a background, selected the Sun and Earth, recorded their voice, and programmed the Earth to talk and move around the sun.

The third group added a background, selected a sun, and recorded their voice to explain how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.