World 5 · Messages · Guide 1 of 5Free guide
What is a message?
One character sends a message. Another one waits for it, then goes.
Meet send and receive
Two new blocks, and they work as a pair. The send block sends a message. The 📬 hat waits for a message, the way the 👆 hat waits for a tap. When one character runs the send block, every script under a 📬 hat starts. One character's program has just told another one: go.
A send and a 📬 hat: that is how two programs talk.
See it work
The hen's program ends by sending a message. The chick's program is under a 📬 hat. Watch who waits.
🐤
The chick did not move until the hen's send block ran. Then its 📬 hat heard the message, and its program started.
Your turn
Now you're the programmer.
Can you get the squirrel to the acorn?
Get the 🐿️ to the 🌰 — but only after the 🐦 has flown past.
The bird's program
Blocks
Your program
Go further
What if the bird never sends?
Imagine the bird's program without its send block. The bird would still fly to the post box — and your squirrel would wait under its 📬 hat for ever, because a hat only starts when its message comes. A message that is never sent is never heard.
For grown-ups
Sending a message for other programs to react to is called broadcasting, or message passing — how the parts of a game, an app or a website tell each other that something happened.
Keep going
Next in World 5Can one block start another? →Where this goes
Make a game other kids can play
The blocks on this page are a first taste. In a Kubrio project your kid builds a real game — powers, triggers, levels and all — and other kids get to play it.