Ex Sedda – from the chair

Here is an excellent resource for learning Scratch from La Salle Schools and Universities:

http://learnscratch.org/

I’ve searched for tools that could help teach Matteo some introductory concepts in computer programming. We’ve downloaded Scratch and it seems very promising. They have a rich gallery of other kids’ projects which you can download and modify. You can find our more about it at MIT’s website at http://scratch.mit.edu/ .

For reading we are using the old fashioned McGuffey's readers^W and Reading Detective materials from Critical Thinking.  McGuffey’s  readers still seem to be the best reading material, much richer than anything of the more recent vintage.  But McGuffey is also outdated in many ways, most importantly in the cultural sensitivity area;  it represents dominant culture’s  sentiments at the end of 19th century with all its faults.  Reading Detective offers more modern comprehension exercises. These two together combine into an effective structured reading program.

Matteo also must read books of his own choosing for an hour a day.