ScratchJr Family Day is a hands-on, interactive event where young learners and their families come together to explore creative coding with ScratchJr! This event provides a welcoming space for children and their caregivers—parents, grandparents, siblings, and extended family members—to collaborate, experiment, and create their own projects using ScratchJr.

This facilitation guide was developed collaboratively by staff at Scratch and the Office of Computer Science at Chicago Public Schools, with teachers and school leaders in mind. It has suggestions for ways to run Virtual Family Creative Coding Nights. Not every suggestion will work for every school or organization, so please modify your event to fit your audience’s needs!

A helpful list of items you may want to collect or have donated to enhance your creative learning space.

Scratch pioneered block-based programming, enabling young people to learn to code creatively and interactively. Creating Scratch projects fosters the development of computational and creative thinking skills that are critical for future success: learners identify problems, break them into smaller parts, debug them, and iterate on solutions.

Over the years, we’ve loved seeing the unique, exciting strategies educators use to explore Scratch and creative learning in their classrooms, clubs, and beyond. To learn more about our Creative Learning Philosophy, see our guide that lays out our guiding stars and includes a trove of facilitation tips and recommended reading. And we encourage you to explore the variety of Creative Learning Materials in our Learning Library (including lesson plans, coding cards, and educator guides).

When we adapt/remix or develop a creative coding activity/lesson, we look to:

• Design for tinkering and learning through play
• Design spaces for learners to bring themselves in and see themselves in the lesson (considerations we call the 4/5 P’s): Peers, Passion, Projects, Play, and Purpose
• Allow multiple pathways of engagement to foster a wide diversity of projects and support different experience levels (what we call low floors, wide walls, high ceilings or the “house model”)
• Create opportunities that naturally guide learners through the creative learning spiral (an iterative process of imagining, creating, playing, sharing, reflecting, and imagining again) by building in time and opportunties to play, share. and reflect

As facilitators, we want to support playful learning and tinkering mindset values, so that participants can:

• Engage playfully in projects that are meaningful to them and elicit joy
• Collaborate with peers to experiment, share, and celebrate ideas
• Develop a mindset that is comfortable with the discomfort of getting stuck (making room for risk and iteration)
• Develop a mindset that thinks critically about strategies for getting unstuck (saving space for the process to start again or help them imagine what’s next)

Scratch pioneered block-based programming, enabling young people to learn to code creatively and interactively. Creating Scratch projects fosters the development of computational and creative thinking skills that are critical for future success: learners identify problems, break them into smaller parts, debug them, and iterate on solutions.

As a parent interested in engaging in creative learning and creative coding with your learner, we encourage you to support playful learning and tinkering mindset values by letting them engage playfully in projects that are meaningful to them and elicit joy, helping them develop a mindset that is comfortable with the discomfort of getting stuck (making room for risk and iteration), and helping them develop a mindset that thinks critically about strategies for getting unstuck (saving space for the process to start again or help them imagine what’s next).

To learn more about our Creative Learning Philosophy and how to engage young people in creative coding, see our guide. And we encourage you to explore the variety of Creative Learning Materials in our Learning Library (including coding cards, starter projects, tutorial videos and guides to blocks, and more).