[SamBam]

I played Robot Turtles [1] with my kids, a boardgame with a similar idea: The kid can lay out cards that define what the turtle should do, and the adult moves the turtle exactly as instructed. Slightly different because, like in the original Logo, you can say "turn left" or "turn right," and it can be hard for the kids to remember that left and right are from the perspective of the turtle, whichever way they are currently facing.

By about age 7 or 8 it stopped being fun, because the kids could pretty much lay out an entire one-shot sequence of cards that solved the maze. (We never really got into trying to code "functions," it never quite seemed to be intuitive in the context of the game.)

1. http://www.robotturtles.com/

[dkasper]

I feel like a next level would be RoboRally. One of my all time favorite “programming” games. I think it may still be in production

[WorldMaker]

One silly, maybe extreme, direction to move to try to explore building functions together is Alligator Eggs: https://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/

[PebblesRox]

Thank you for sharing! I tried it out with my 7yo, who was interested. Unfortunately we had some issues with the toddler interfering so our session got interrupted.

I did find an online version here, for anyone who wants to try it without cutting out a bunch of alligators: https://tibordp.github.io/gator-calculus/

I am also on the search for more puzzles/challenges to do with it.

[PebblesRox]

This blog post [0] has a few more examples, and I like how the author's alligator calculator [1] translates from traditional notation into alligators.

[0]https://propella.blogspot.com/2011/09/yet-another-alligator-...

[1]https://metatoys.org/alligator/#!/(%CE%BBx.x)%20y

[livrem]

It was one of the first successful boardgames on kickstarter, that really started the trend of boardgames being published by crowdfunding. Found this 2014 article claiming it was "the most backed board game in Kickstarter history": https://coolmomtech.com/2014/06/robot-turtles-game-from-thin...

There is a competitive mode for it, still available on the official site: http://www.robotturtles.com/galapagos/ I have thought of trying that some day. The original game has not been played much since my kids were younger, but they are also not yet all old enough to play RoboRally. On the other hand we also have Colt Express that I think is a very fun lighter almost-RoboRally kind of game (if you squint a bit), that might appeal more to kids too old to still want to play Robot Turtles.