With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) learn important new skills as they program their own interactive stories and games.
By snapping together graphical programming blocks, children can make characters move, jump, dance, and sing. In the process, children learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively on the computer. They also use math and language in a meaningful and motivating context, supporting the development of early-childhood numeracy and literacy. With ScratchJr, children don’t just learn to code, they code to learn.
ScratchJr was inspired by the popular Scratch programming language (http://scratch.mit.edu), used by millions of people (ages 8 and up) around the world. The ScratchJr interface and programming language were redesigned to make them appropriate for younger children’s cognitive, personal, social, and emotional development.
ScratchJr is a collaboration between the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab, the Developmental Technologies research group at Tufts University, and the Playful Invention Company. The ScratchJr project has received generous financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF DRL-1118664), Scratch Foundation, LEGO Foundation, and British Telecommunications.
If you enjoy using this free app, please consider making a donation to the Scratch Foundation (www.scratchfoundation.org), a nonprofit organization that provides ongoing support for ScratchJr. We appreciate donations of all sizes, large and small.
Although being more-so directed at younger children, I believe this game is fun for all ages! With regular Scratch being too complex to simply be its own mobile app (a search engine is required to use it) this is an amazing substitute that has just enough challenges to not completely feel directed to 4-7 year olds. Of course, apps like this are always bound to a few glitches, but that barely downgrades the rating. The main reason I put four stars instead of five is due to a really restraining feature—not glitch—I’ve found, that no other review has talked about (to the best of my knowledge of scrolling and reading reviews.) This feature is hard to explain, but if you test it out on the app you might get it. Explanation: Layers in ScratchJr are pretty odd. You have to press and hold on a layer to move it to the top, no exceptions. This isn’t a bad feature, but combined with the sprite hit boxes it makes it hard to deal with. In ScratchJr you can (hypothetically) draw a box on the very left of the sprite canvas, but the hit box still includes all of the blank, invisible area. Now imagine that with more sprites, and imagine your original sprite was supposed to be on top. You try to press and hold to move it upwards in the layers, but you hit the invisible spot an other sprite’s hit box. A few ways to fix this would be to add a whole interface for layers, or to make it so you can only move the sprite you have selected. Overall an amazing, super fun app, but the few setbacks can be difficult! ❤️
Awesome, simple, and fun. Fix something though.
Amy Hua Kitty Cat
There is this mail letter thing, you can choose different colors for it to trigger a signal in your coding thing, or, whatever you call what it does. There is only a few colors, not a lot. I don’t like that part, because I have a lot more things to use that mail thingy than just 6 colors. Can we maybe put a text, instead of colors? Like, any text. For example: “car”. And on the character, you put the same text on that mail thingy. And the action happens. Also, why only 4 scenes? Can we add more than 4 scenes? I also want the audio recording quality a little better. There is this noise sound, it makes the recording sound a little glitchy, I also want to have a feature where you can just get audio from your audio library, or video library. Thank you, I just want an improvement to make coding better. Overall from this, this app is great! Thank you for reading.
So nostalgic
RedPanda_XD
Sooooo, in 1st or 2nd grade (I don’t remember) in school we were told how to use this app for the first time and it was so FUN! I remember going home and literally playing it every single day. But I’ve kinda forgotten about it. But a few days ago I was scrolling through my iPad and found this, I was like “OMG I remember this!” So I clicked on it and started scrolling down to look at my old creations (my first ever on there was about a fire dragon and a flame dog. Now I really love wings of fire and warriors/ warrior cats) and I dictated that I wanted to make something else, so I made a bunch of different colored dragons and made them fade into each other. (Also I think u should pleeeseee make cats a default animal, I mean I know u have that mascot like one but I want one like the dogs) any way all I want to say is how nostalgic this is for me (also random but when did they add this emoji? 🫎🫎🫎)
Great app, but please make the ability to add more then four frames!
Emily80811111
I absolutely love using ScratchJr! It’s a fantastic tool for introducing kids to coding and creativity. The interface is simple, fun, and perfect for younger children. It’s amazing to see how easily kids can create their own stories and animations.However, one thing I really wish for is the ability to add more than just four frames to a project. Sometimes, I want to create longer animations or tell more complex stories, but I find myself limited by the four-frame restriction. It would be great if there were an option to add more frames or a way to extend the timeline to make projects longer and more detailed.Overall, I think ScratchJr is a brilliant app, but giving users the ability to work with more frames would make it even better!
Bug Fixes
Version 1.5.11
The developer, Scratch Foundation, Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Location
Usage Data
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Scratch Foundation, Inc.
Size
53.5 MB
Category
Education
Compatibility
Requires iOS 11.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 11.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 11.0 or later.
iPod touch Requires iOS 11.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.