[arghIdontwantto]

I did something similar for my kids class (mix between 3 to 5 year olds).

The first thing I did was make a game in Unity (very simple, no death just collect things) that featured their faces and school uniform (had written permission from all parents). The kids were amazed at it and asked a lot of questions. The main point I tried to explain was computers are also for 'working' and 'creating' games, not just playing them and you could make games by 'programming' and explaining a bit what that is.

After this, I tried to explain what an algorithm is. Sounds strange to try to explain this to such young kids, but you can relate to real world situations (in this case, they have a 'routine' for lunch that never deviates, so I related to this and other routines) but to make it interesting, at the end we played a little game where we drew a grid on the floor, and we had to program a 'robot' to go forward or turn to get from one place to another. The robot was usually one of the kids and the others had to give instructions. We started to have one instruction, do movement, one instruction, do movement to having them try at least to do 4-5 instructions to get to the end. The kids loved the game and the teacher even created a small table based one for them to play by themselves.

After I took a Sphero ball, did a small app to control it based on the game we played before, and let the kids try to do the same, but this time controlling an actual 'robot'.

While I didn't show them any code, they understood that they could create 'routines' in the computer to control or display things. Was pretty cool (and the parents loved it as well when they saw the game and the kids explained to them what an 'algorithm' is :))

(this was over the course of a few weeks, so it wasn't a full day of them trying to learn everything)

[schoen]

There have been physical turtle robots that are programmed using Logo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(robot)

Part of Seymour Papert's pedagogical idea of programming the turtle seems to me to be that the the students can put themselves mentally in the position of the turtle and ask "how would I know what to do next?", ideally with the insight that we're looking for a rule that can be expressed in language and that answers the question in every situation. That sounds very akin to your lesson!

I guess the Sphero ball might be a kind of update of this.

[intoverflow2]

Beauty of Logo vs other robot command puzzles like Lightbot is Logo isn't just solving puzzles but a gateway to actually being creative with code.

Kid walking away from lightbot: "I completed all the hard challenges"

Kid walking away from Logo: "I drew this flower using code"

Wish more kids coding tools aimed for the latter.

[chuckdries]

Your method sounds a lot like lightbot[0], which I've had a lot of success using with 10-12 year olds. Check out their flash demo, it's actually kinda fun for a few minutes.

EDIT: just noticed lightbot jr. That wasn't there when I used lightbot, but if it's at the same standards as normal lightbot I'm interested.

[0] https://lightbot.com/index.html

[rb808]

that looks great, thanks.

[a_d]

Which school is this? (We are looking for a school for our kids - that's why I am curious)

[arghIdontwantto]

In Portugal. Called Escola Moderna (Modern School). not sure if this is a more national methodology or international.

The main idea of the kids learning is through experimenting with things. They are also VERY keen on parents going there and spend the day with the entire class talking about their jobs, or just general things (some parents did gymnastics, other baked cakes, my ex-wife did a hands-on demonstration of what a paramedic may do on an accident. I mostly focused on science stuff, built paddle boats with them with rubber bands to teach them about physics, made the games mentioned before, etc)

If this isn't available, try Montessori schools as they share a lot of the ideas with Modern School.