My 7 year old is really enjoying his lessons in the computing room at his new school. In Year 3 they start to learn Scratch which he’s really excited about. He loves computer games, especially Minecraft, Cars 3, Mario Kart, Splatoon 2 and anything Lego.
We’ve played around a bit with Scratch at home, he can make a sprite walk across the screen and move around. It’s something he loves to do with his Dad and it’s great to see them doing something together.
Star Wars Coding Projects
Combining the beginner coding language Scratch with the indomitable Star WarsTM empire, Star Wars Coding Projects (published 6 October 2017) provides Scratch Padawans with step-by-step instructions for creating cool computer projects, animations, and games.
Coders can create their own droid sprite, navigate a spaceship through an asteroid belt, go on a jet-pack adventure, and harness the power of the Force to move kyber crystals, all while mastering essential coding skills!
Featuring six fully illustrated Scratch projects, budding coders ages eight and up will love the “C-3PO says” coding concept panels, R2-D2’s “Code Words,” and the exclusively commissioned Star Wars artwork featuring classic characters from the saga.
My son loved the projects and immediately book marked a few of the projects to try with his Dad. The book is really well made, he loved the colour coded pages and the progress bar which runs along the top of each page. My son really enjoyed reading this book and was excited to get started.
However we found the cover slightly misleading. The book is aimed at ages 8 and over, so at least Year 3 and above, and creating your own sprites seems a little advanced for this age. You can of course use the sprites which come with Scratch or create your own Star Wars characters but you would need to spend some time doing this before you start any of the projects in the book. It would be amazing if the Star Wars sprites were included as a digital download to accompany the book, but I don’t think that Disney and Lucas Film would ever allow that!
Star Wars™ Coding Projects, © & TM 2017 LUCASFILM LTD published by DK, £12.99, would make a great gift for Star Wars fans.
I wish I had learnt stuff like this at school as it’s such a useful skill to know x
I think this would be too advanced for me never mind Year 3, my nephew is doing coding at school and it is incredible how much more he knows than me already x
It’s refreshing that product review is not just a sponsored praise from the beginning to the end. I’ve seen this on bookstore and wondered the same thing, copyright gray area.