Coding for Kids Lesson 1: Make a cat dance in Scratch

Free lesson, Grades 4–9. About 30 minutes on a phone, tablet or computer.

What you need

Open scratch.mit.edu in a browser (free; no account needed to try, a parent can create one later to save work).

Steps

1. Click Create. You will see the cat sprite.
2. From Events, drag when green flag clicked.
3. From Control, add forever. Inside it, from Motion, add move 10 steps and if on edge, bounce.
4. From Looks, add next costume and from Control wait 0.2 seconds.
5. Click the green flag. Your cat dances across the screen!

Challenge

Grades 4–6: add a sound from Sound. Grades 7–9: make the cat speed up each time it bounces using a variable.

Parent: talk about it

Ask your child what “forever” means to the computer, and what happens if you remove the wait block.

See the full Coding for Kids course