Scratch is a freeware program that allows you to create interactive games or animation. the Spawn and I fired it up for the first time last night and I am floored at how easy it was to use and the Spawn absolutely loves making his own cartoons with it.
Within the first 15 minutes of installing the program, the Spawn and I were able to create this simple Scratch project:
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He drew the shapes in the basic Sprite Editor of the program, and programmed each of them to play a recording of his voice when clicked. Check it out in action on the Spawn’s blog (have the latest version of Java installed on your browser to view the project properly.) |
| The Spawn was obsessed with Scratch for hours! Even with a cold, he worked hard at creating another animation using some pre-installed Sprites which he edited and drew his own background. This was the result of his work which he finished at 2 in the morning! (He will upload a playable version of this animation onto his blog tomorrow.) |  |
We are using Scratch on a Windows 7 Starter machine but they also have versions for Mac and Linux. Scratch highly encourages sharing the projects you create and also allows you to download and “remix” projects created by other users easily.
The Spawn loves creating his own interactive cartoons and i can see so many possibilities of using this program to create custom, interactive lessons for him. It’s so easy to use that even those with zero programming or animation experiences, like us, will be able to pick it up in no time.
Download a copy of Scratch yourself and see what you can create with it!
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