Understand and apply physical science concepts such as force, motion, and gravity. Develop basic programming skills using Scratch. Collect and analyze data using Vernier force and acceleration sensors ...

(Related: Robots that use Scratch to teach coding) The Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab created Scratch to help kids ages 8 to 16 learn how to think creatively, reason ...

The old Basic interpreters were pretty forgiving ... These days, you are more likely to sneak kids into programming via Scratch — a system for setting up programs via blocks in a GUI.