A few weeks ago we ran our third Code and Make workshop at Downswood Community Centre in Maidstone.

What are Code and Make Workshops?

Code and Make Workshops provide a great way for 7 to 11 year olds to get stuck into some creative fun with computing during the school holidays. The children had lots of fun while enhancing their coding knowledge and creativity! You can find more about upcoming workshops on the Code and Make page. 

Computer Game Creator

Our summer holiday workshop was focussed on creating computer games; children learnt how to design and program their own computer games using free software called Kodu Game Lab. At the end of the session we held a showcase where they were able to show their creations to their grown-ups and they were able to take their games home to play or continue working on. Here’s an overview of the workshop:

What is Kodu Game Lab?

Kodu Game Lab is a 3D game development environment aimed at children. It has a simple interface to enable children to get started easily by building their world and populating it with characters and objects. Children can then program the game rules within a visual programming environment.

Kodu Game Lab is available as a free download from the Windows Store.

What did the children learn?

In this session we began by teaching children how to create a world by selecting different types of terrain and changing the heights. The children then investigated the available objects they could add and once they were happy with the world they had created they programmed a character to be controlled by the player to collect objects and add to the score. The player could win the game by collecting all of the objects. The children then added a non-player character to the game and added dialogue between the characters.

Once they had gained the basic skills they needed to make their own game they had a go at designing and building their own games.

We definitely achieved a lot in one workshop and it was amazing to see how much the children enjoyed unleashing their creativity and story-telling skills within their games!

Our next Code and Make Workshop is a spooky Robot Monster Zoo and will be taking place on 30th October, just in time for Halloween! You can find out more and take advantage of our early bird discount here.

Last week we ran our first two Code and Make workshops at Downswood Community Centre in Maidstone.

What are Code and Make Workshops?

Code and Make Workshops provide a great way for 7 to 11 year olds to get stuck into some creative fun with computing during the school holidays. The children had lots of fun while enhancing their coding knowledge and STEM skills! You can find more about upcoming workshops on the Code and Make page. Here’s an overview of last week's workshops:

Robot Coronation Parade

Our first Code and Make workshop of the day was a robot coronation parade in which the children programmed micro:bits to control a CuteBot robot to pull along a parade float; designed and decorated in honour of our new King! They began by using MakeCode to program the LED headlights and used loops to make them change colour during the parade before adding movement.

Digital Carnival Games

Our second workshop involved making digital carnival games from cardboard and detecting when players win by flashing the attached neopixel LED strips. The children had great fun learning about electronic circuits before we began coding, they then used their foil-covered balls to complete a circuit inside the game by throwing it through the hole. They combined this with the use of selection so their program could ‘decide’ when to make the lights flash. Everyone had lots of fun and some of the children even made some extra pocket money when they took home their creations and charged grown-ups to play! To enable us to easily connect electronic components we connected our micro:bits to a ring:bit breakout board first, which also holds the batteries neatly too.

Our next Code and Make workshops are taking place on 25th August. You can find out more here.

If you’re a parent looking to learn more about using  a micro:bit with your child check out the micro:bit website to get started!