Offline coding, or unplugged coding, is a great way to start kids thinking about coding and problem solving without the stress and pressure of actually coding. It’s a perfect introduction for pre-readers as well as parents that aren’t too sure about coding themselves!
There are lots of activities out there if you google “Coding unplugged” or “Offline Coding”. So many in fact that it can be a little overwhelming! So I’d like to share with you a couple of resources I used when I first started exploring programming concepts with my boys.
The first is a game from Left Brain Craft Brain, called the If-Then Backyard coding game for kids. It introduces the kids to the basic programming conditional statement, IF-THEN, whilst having lots of fun. Either the adult or a child could be the programmer and the others are the computers. The programmer gives a command such as “If I turn in a circle, Then you turn in a circle”. Depending on the age of the kids you can increase the difficulty by looking at If-then-else statements. Check out the Left Brain Craft Brain page for further details.
Our other favourite is this cool Coding Lego Maze from Research Parent. At the time I was looking for pre-made coding statements to use with my boys when I hit the jackpot and found Michelle’s LEGO maze printable! Kids as young as 4 or 5 can use the maze and code a program to move their character from the Start to the End of the maze. My boys used to like to take their character on an adventure all over the maze before they let him get to the End. Older kids can explore the more complex programming concepts such as while loops and if statements. It’s a great resource to use when introducing programming as well as guiding kids through the design process – develop, test, review.
For anyone that want activities that align to the Australian Curriculum for Digital Technologies, check out the new DT @ Home resources from the Australian Computing Academy. These new activites can be completed without a computer and internet. You will also find they have online activities available for technologies such as Scratch, Python and micro:bit.
In my next post I’ll talk about some of the offline toys and games you can use to introduce coding without needing a computer.