What?-ology = CODE-ology

What?-ology is an afterschool program that I have offered as a chance to do a random mash-up of things so I can pick anything I want! We got a 3 month Bitsbox subscription over the summer, so I decided that my first What?-ology of the year would be a great time to do some coding!

I had different stations set up, and the kids more-or-less harmlessly moved between them. There was only a little bit of bloodshed (kidding) and fighting (so NOT kidding) about who got to use the Sphero next, and one girl told me that she is planning to be a game designer and that doing the Bitsbox coding helped her a ton (!!!)

I had WAY too many kids at this program (I know, awful problem to have)

Bitsbox:

I had six laptops set up with the intro to Bitsbox, and most kids didn’t get beyond that (the group I had skewed really young) but they still had fun. A few moved on to coding some of the games from the Bitsbox packets.

Sphero:

I created tape shapes on the floor and had the grand plan that they kids would actually program the Sphero using the SPRK app to trace the shapes; we ended up mostly using the drive mode to move the robot, which was still pretty cool. Most of the kids had never seen a Sphero before, so I was happy to give them all a chance to play with it.

Robot frogs:

I pulled out my no-tech coding game, and a lot of the group enjoyed playing this game.

Apps:

I had a few additional ipads set out with Daisy the Dinosaur, Scratch Jr, and Cargo Bot.

De-coder ring:

Knowing that my group would be large and young, I wanted to make sure there was a simple project that kids could do if they got overwhelmed or needed a break, so we made paper plate decoder rings.