With a growing number of ScratchJr usage, over 19 million users worldwide, we examined the use in the United States of the free ScratchJr programming language, explicitly designed for young children ages 5–7, to learn how to code. Our objective was to explore children’s usage of the ScratchJr tablet app at home and school settings. We analyzed usage data from Google Analytics in 1.5 years, comparing Scratchsr usage in the two different settings. Our dataset comprised a total of 4,352,802 coding sessions, generated by a daily average of 2525 home users and 9969 school users. The results suggested that, although children in both settings on average spent an equal duration with ScratchJr, children in home settings spent more time exploring advanced coding blocks and the paint editor compared to children at school. Further, children at school tended to use similar types of coding blocks across several days. In contrast, children at home were more likely to use a diversity of block categories and difficulty levels. The implications of this research are, first, that usage patterns may help us understand how children across settings learn to program differently. Second, based on these findings, it may be essential for parents at home and educators at school to consider using different approaches and strategies.

随着 ScratchJr 的使用越来越多，全球用户超过 1900 万，我们研究了免费的 ScratchJr 编程语言在美国的使用情况，该语言专为 5-7 岁的幼儿设计，以学习如何编码。我们的目标是探索儿童在家庭和学校环境中使用 ScratchJr 平板电脑应用程序的情况。我们分析了 1.5 年内来自 Google Analytics 的使用数据，比较了两种不同设置下的 Scratchsr 使用情况。我们的数据集总共包含 4,352,802 个编码会话，由平均每天 2525 名家庭用户和 9969 名学校用户生成。结果表明，虽然在两种环境中的儿童平均在 ScratchJr 上花费的时间相同，但与在学校的儿童相比，家庭环境中的儿童花在探索高级编码块和绘画编辑器上的时间更多。更多，在学校的孩子们倾向于在几天内使用类似类型的编码块。相比之下，在家的孩子更有可能使用多种积木类别和难度级别。这项研究的意义是，首先，使用模式可以帮助我们了解不同环境中的孩子如何学习不同的编程方式。其次，根据这些发现，家中的家长和学校的教育工作者可能必须考虑使用不同的方法和策略。