If you’re looking for a learning activity that kids can do on their own at home this summer, consider introducing them and their parents to Scratch Jr.

Scratch Jr. is based on the popular online Scratch program in which students can learn to program. Scratch Jr for iPad and for Android uses the same drag and drop programming principles used in Scratch. On Scratch Jr students can program multimedia stories and games.

To program a story or game on Scratch Jr. students select background settings for each frame of the story. Then in each frame students select the actions that they want their characters to take. Students snap programming pieces together to make characters move and talk in their stories and games.