You might be surprised to hear it, but as an edtech company we believe in a healthy dose of JOMO (joy of missing out) when it comes to screen time. Unplugging from digital devices and teaching coding through hands-on activities helps children understand abstract concepts while developing their problem-solving, creativity and metacognitive skills.
If you want to experience more JOMO while still developing key STEM skills, we've compiled four fun activities to try with the children in your life.
Emoji Storytelling
Kids and adults love to use emojis—they're a great introduction to code-breaking and are a language of their own! And since emojis are increasing becoming the way we communicate our emotions and thoughts through texting, kids benefit from learning to interpret them. Print out this worksheet with emojis or have kids drawn their own to tell a story (e.g., Tell their day in emojis).
Robot Turtles
One of the first steps in learning to think like a programmer is understanding functions and directions. The game can become increasingly complex with 'bugs' such as ice walls being introduced. It's a fun way to develop a beginning programmer’s mindset. Get started with this board game.
If/Then Physical Activity
Programmers write commands that prompt computers to complete an action depending on the variables that are presented. The If/Then game helps children learn about a 'conditional statement' in programming in an age-appropriate way that helps them internalize the concept through physical activity.
Baking
Baking and coding have a lot in common. They each follow a set of instructions to make something—coding uses an algorithm and baking uses a recipe. They both use if/then statements, loops (repeating an action) and sorting to get to the final product.
Do you have a favourite offline creative coding activity we should know about?