Project 144: Pushing on with Programming

Programming is one of those activities that we always say we'll do more of, but then never do, in fact it's a year since our last programming project (Project 85: Revisiting Programming). So we decided to have a big three week project focused just on programming: Monica focused on Scratch, and Solomon focused on Python.

They each started with the appropriate "Coding for Beginners..." book from Usborne, before using other books. The Usborne books are really easy to follow, so most of the time the children worked their way through with little help. Coding Games in Python was a little bit trickier, making use of the pygame module, but Solomon soon got the hang of it.

Over the three weeks the children did literally dozens of projects, so we asked them to pick three to illustrate their work. 

Solomon picked a simple loop:

Dodge the Bombs (a minesweeper-style game) was his favourite game (from Coding for Beginners...):

Although he also enjoyed coming up with questions for his quiz game (from Coding Games in Python):

Monica picked one project from each of her three books: 

Coding for Beginners:

Code your own Space Adventure:

Code your own Jungle Adventure:

Both the children really enjoyed the programming and are keen to do it more often, which we will certainly encourage as it's a good way to get some peace and quiet for a couple of hours!

Next project: Starting a Business!