These introductory-level workbooks are excellent for gauging students programming aptitude! Before you settle into a more thorough programming course or guides (such as the DK Coding Games & Projects series), this inexpensive series is good for testing the waters of potential coders. Each book begins with a 4-6 page getting started... section just enough to understand the language and interface, but nothing more. The real meat of the workbooks is 4-5 simple projects of increasing complexity. Students create a project, make a few decisions of their own, and then take a quiz to test their understanding of the chapters materials (solutions included in the back). The projects are organized into numbered paragraphs, each accompanied by a snippet of code or screenshots of what the student will be seeing. Humorous illustrations and helpful captions lighten up each page to further engage readers. Each book in the series can be used independently or together, as there is little overlapping material. Overall, this is one of the best series available to introduce very young students to programming without investing much time or money. Scratch books require Adobe 10.2 or later and use Scratch 2 (available for free online). Each book is 40 pages, paperback.
