Scratch

Scratch is the free block-based programming environment from MIT, and it is the single tool most American children encounter when they first write code. It is not a curriculum, exactly, but it is the substrate on which most elementary computing education is now built.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Subject specialist (computer science / coding)
Worldview	Secular
Grades	K-12 (ScratchJr ages 5-7; Scratch ages 8-16+)
Formats	Browser-based digital tool; iPad and Android apps for ScratchJr
Cost tier	Free
Parent intensity	2
ESA-common	No (no purchase required)
Accredited	No
Established	2007
Website	scratch.mit.edu

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Real computational thinking; ceiling at intermediate programming
Ease of teaching	4	Intuitive enough that children teach themselves; parent involvement minimal
Content quality	5	Best-in-class educational tool design from MIT Media Lab
Flexibility	5	Open-ended creative platform; children build whatever they imagine
Value for money	5	Free, including unlimited cloud project hosting
Worldview scope	5	Secular, used across all worldviews and contexts
Visual/design	4	Friendly and functional; not flashy by 2026 standards
Support resources	4	Free Harvard Creative Computing Curriculum; vast community library

Who the publisher is

Scratch was created in 2007 by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, led by Mitchel Resnick. The project's intellectual lineage runs through Seymour Papert's Logo language and the constructionist tradition, the conviction that children learn best by making things they care about, and Resnick's group has held to that line for nearly two decades. Scratch was originally a downloadable desktop application; in 2013 the team relaunched as a browser-based platform, and in 2019 Scratch 3.0 added support for tablets and a redesigned block palette. The platform remains free, advertisement-free, and ad-supported by no one, operations are funded by the Scratch Foundation, a nonprofit, with grants from major technology companies and foundations.

The scale is enormous. As of 2026 the Scratch online community reports more than 100 million registered users worldwide, with tens of millions of shared projects in its public library. American public schools, libraries, and homeschool co-ops have used Scratch as the on-ramp to programming for the better part of fifteen years. Code.org's elementary curriculum, the Hour of Code initiative, and many state-level computer science standards all reference or build on Scratch as the foundational tool.

ScratchJr, the iPad and Android app for ages five to seven, is a separate but related project developed jointly by the MIT group, the DevTech Research Group at Tufts, and the Playful Invention Company. ScratchJr uses an even simpler block syntax, picture-based, no text required, and is designed for children who cannot yet read.

The core pedagogy

Scratch teaches programming by letting children build the programs they actually want to build: a story, an animation, a chase game, a music sequencer, a quiz that asks the user questions. The interface presents a stage on the left, a sprite library at bottom-left, a code area in the middle, and a palette of colored code blocks on the right. The child drags blocks ("when green flag clicked," "move 10 steps," "if touching color red"), snaps them into stacks, and the sprite responds. There is no syntax to memorize, no semicolons to forget, no compiler to placate. The child sees, immediately, what the code does.

Scope and sequence in Scratch is not linear in the textbook sense, the platform is open-ended, and a determined child can encounter most fundamental programming concepts (sequencing, loops, conditionals, variables, broadcasts, cloning, lists, simple data structures) within a year of regular use. What the platform does not do is enforce any particular path. A family that wants structure typically pairs Scratch with a published curriculum: the Creative Computing Curriculum Guide from Harvard's ScratchEd team is the most-used free option, with twenty hours of structured projects from drawing to interactive games. Paid alternatives layered on top of Scratch include Khan Academy's computing courses (which use a JavaScript variant rather than Scratch proper) and various paid Scratch courses from Outschool and CodeMonkey.

Signature mechanics: (1) Block-based syntax. Children cannot make a syntax error. The block fits or it does not. This eliminates the single largest barrier to entry in traditional programming instruction. (2) Immediate feedback. Click the green flag, see the sprite move. The latency between code and observable result is roughly one second, which keeps young learners engaged in a way that compile-and-run text languages do not. (3) Remix culture. Every public Scratch project can be remixed: a child opens someone else's game, changes the cat to a dragon, the score to a high-score tracker, and learns by modifying running code. This is unique to Scratch among educational programming platforms and is, arguably, the platform's most important pedagogical contribution.

A day in the life

A typical fourth-grader using Scratch as part of a homeschool computer-science block sits down for thirty to forty-five minutes after lunch on coding days. She opens scratch.mit.edu, logs into her account, and continues her in-progress project, a maze game with a cat avatar that loses lives if it touches the maze walls. Today's task: add a timer that counts down from sixty seconds and ends the game when it reaches zero. She finds the "timer" variable in the variables palette, drags blocks to set it to 60 at the start, decrement it every second using a "wait 1 secs" loop, and check whether it has reached zero. The cat-avoid-the-wall logic is already debugged; the timer takes twenty minutes including a few false starts. She publishes the updated project to her Scratch profile, looks at three remixes others have made of her earlier projects, and gets distracted by a new game on the front page that she wants to remix tomorrow.

A six-year-old using ScratchJr on an iPad has a different rhythm. He is making an animated story about a dinosaur and a rocket. The blocks are larger, picture-only, and there is no online community. ScratchJr is local-only by design for the youngest users. He works for fifteen to twenty minutes, asks a parent for help twice ("how do I make him jump higher?"), and saves his story.

What they do exceptionally well

On-ramp to computational thinking. Scratch is the strongest entry point to programming available to children, full stop. Editorial view: a thoughtful child who spends two years with Scratch from age eight to ten arrives at age ten understanding loops, conditionals, variables, and event handling at a level that traditional text-based programming education does not typically reach until middle school. The ramp-down in friction matters.

Free, complete, and noncommercial. Scratch costs nothing, contains no advertising, requires no purchase decisions, and works on essentially any laptop made in the last ten years. The Scratch Foundation is funded by foundations and technology-company grants rather than by user fees, and there is no upsell path. This matters particularly for homeschool families operating on tight budgets and for ESA-funded families whose programs do not pay for free tools but who can use Scratch alongside paid math curricula at no incremental cost.

Community library as instructional resource. The fifty-million-plus public projects on Scratch are themselves a curriculum. A child who is stuck on collision detection can search "collision detection," find a hundred working examples, remix one, and learn how it works by modifying it. Few educational platforms have this scale of peer-generated instructional content.

What they do poorly

Ceiling at intermediate programming. Scratch is excellent for the first two to three years of a child's coding education and increasingly limiting after that. The block syntax begins to feel cramped when projects grow large; recursion is awkward; advanced data structures are limited; performance with many sprites becomes a constraint. By roughly age twelve, the strongest students should transition to a text-based language. Python, JavaScript, or for the more ambitious, the Harvard CS50 introductory course.

Not a complete computer-science curriculum. Scratch is a tool, not a curriculum. A family that hands a child Scratch and says "learn to code" gets, typically, a child who makes increasingly sophisticated video games and rarely encounters concepts like algorithm efficiency, version control, or software design. Pairing with a structured curriculum (Harvard's free Creative Computing guide, paid courses from CodeMonkey or Tynker, or middle-school AP Computer Science Principles materials) makes a real difference.

Online community supervision. The Scratch online community is moderated and generally well-behaved by internet standards, but it is still an online community where children share projects and exchange comments. Families who want fully offline coding instruction for their elementary-aged children should use ScratchJr or the downloadable offline Scratch editor, which provide the same coding environment without the social layer.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Scratch if: you want to introduce a child age six to twelve to programming for free; the child responds to creative, open-ended tools and projects; you can pair Scratch with a structured curriculum (Harvard Creative Computing or similar) for accountability; the family has reliable internet and a laptop or tablet; the child has shown interest in animations, games, or storytelling.

• Skip Scratch if: you want a structured, sequential curriculum that tells the child exactly what to learn next (consider CodeMonkey or Tynker); the child is in high school and ready for text-based languages (move directly to Python via Khan Academy, Codecademy, or Harvard CS50); the family wants a parent-led classroom-style coding curriculum rather than a tool the child explores independently.

Cost honest assessment

Scratch is free. There is no subscription, no upgrade tier, no premium content. The Scratch Foundation accepts donations but does not require them. The Harvard Creative Computing Curriculum Guide is also free. The platform runs in any modern browser; ScratchJr is a free iPad or Android download.

Compared to paid block-based platforms like Tynker (roughly $20 per month) or CodeMonkey (roughly $130 per year for the Coding Adventure curriculum) or in-person Code Ninjas franchise membership (roughly $200 per month), Scratch's cost advantage is essentially unbeatable. The trade-off is structure: paid programs deliver curriculum-on-rails; Scratch delivers tools and a community library and asks the family to provide structure.

A realistic all-in elementary computer-science budget using Scratch: $0 for the tool, plus optional $0 to $50 per year for printed activity guides or supplemental project books from No Starch Press's Scratch series.

ESA eligibility notes

Scratch is free and therefore irrelevant to ESA reimbursement workflows, there is nothing to purchase. ESA-funded families typically use ESA dollars for paid alternatives or supplements (CodeMonkey, Outschool Scratch classes, printed Scratch project books) while using Scratch itself for free as the underlying tool. Some state ESAs will reimburse for Outschool live Scratch classes taught by individual instructors, which can be a useful structure overlay for families who want accountability without committing to a full paid curriculum.

Alternatives

• CodeMonkey, a family would pick CodeMonkey over Scratch alone for a structured, sequential curriculum with built-in lessons, automated assessment, and explicit progression to Python.
• Tynker, a family would pick Tynker over Scratch for a paid platform that combines block-based coding with structured curriculum and Minecraft / Roblox modding tracks built specifically for children.
• Khan Academy Computing, a family would pick Khan Academy over Scratch for a free curriculum that uses a JavaScript-like language and structured video lessons, better suited to a child who is ready to move beyond block syntax.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed scratch.mit.edu, the Scratch Foundation site, the ScratchJr site, and Harvard ScratchEd's Creative Computing Curriculum Guide in April 2026. We cross-referenced founding history and platform specifications against MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten group documentation and Wikipedia's Scratch entry. Community size figures verified from the Scratch statistics page in April 2026.