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The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

20y.hu

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Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#3

Post by earlyriser »

alaintno wrote: post #2

It's an amazing idea! I'm always looking for screen-free activities related to problem solving with my daughter. By the way, if someone happens to have other examples, it would be great to share!

A similar game but not DIY is https://www.thinkfun.com/products/robot-turtles/

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#4

Post by throwaway89201 »

alaintno wrote: post #2

It's an amazing idea! I'm always looking for screen-free activities related to problem solving with my daughter. By the way, if someone happens to have other examples, it would be great to share!

Getting someone else to do something is really hard if they take your instructions as literally as with a programming language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waP5vkMaYjg

Another example in Dutch [1] (with activity sheet here [2])

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BcZBl-BKhQ

[2] https://www.leukekinderactiviteiten.nl/wp-content/uploads/20...

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#6

Post by tkgally »

alaintno wrote: post #2

It's an amazing idea! I'm always looking for screen-free activities related to problem solving with my daughter. By the way, if someone happens to have other examples, it would be great to share!

My four-year-old grandson and I enjoy playing with go stones on a go board. The black and white stones and board’s grid lines inspire a lot of counting and geometric-shape activities. Similar things could be done with other types of objects, of course, but I had the stones and board from when I used to play go forty years ago.

My daughter wants me to teach him how to play go at some point, but he’s not quite ready for that. He hasn’t yet learned the concept of winning or losing at games, and we don’t see any need to force that on him early. In the meantime, playing with and talking about the stones seems to have boosted his understanding of numbers.

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#10

Post by _spduchamp »

This is an excellent activity in that it has multiple modalities for tacit learning. Keep in mind that when you are playing with young children, it is the time you are spending together that is most important, so if they want to not follow the rules, make up new games, or just bang away on that xylophone, let them, and enjoy the time you have.
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