We had a wonderful group of smart, creative kids come to do some coding and art at our ArtNight program last Friday, April 16th. Kids 8 and up did the Artist Tutorial together on Code.org. The tutorial contains nine easy puzzles to solve, each one introducing a new concept about coding. Each puzzle also exercises a lot of math knowledge about angles and degrees for different types of polygons. Then you get a free project space to draw whatever you want and share it with your friends! For this part, I showed the kids how to make a rose and then make a ring of roses. If you want to see some examples of other finished Code.org Artist projects, check these out: https://studio.code.org/projects/public.

One thing that jumped out at me throughout the class is how these kids take to computer science like a fish to water! I don’t even have to explain that much to them; they approach the subject by exploring, by popping in different number values and learning from everything they do. They’re so smart!! Today’s kids are products of the Digital Revolution, but they will also soon be the drivers of it. I truly believe they’re gonna grow up shaping our future world with technology.

Here are the slides I created to show some of the final solutions to the puzzles:

And here are the kids’ projects! Some of these screenshots are linked to the page where you can view it as an animation and see “How it works” and remix it to make your own! But not all are linked. I only have screenshots of some of them because some of the links weren’t working so sharing their screens was the only way I could see their projects:

 

Emma’s:

Madelyn’s:

Jesus’s:

Reagan’s:

Sofia’s:

Thomas’s:

Tyler’s:

 

 

I had a blast coding with you all. I offer coding classes like this a few times per year. Remember you can sign up for our Off the Shelf Newsletter to see what programs we’re offering each month! (Please note, we’ll be going to a two-month model again soon so look out for programs coming up the following month too!)