Originally posted on Medium by M. O. Fouda

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We decided to change the format a little bit compared to the last workshop together in April. We aimed to maximize the learning the of the children about problem solving, and logical steps and the “way of thinking” that forms the basis of coding. The reason why it was interesting, was because the workshop at times seemed less beneficial than the last one we did last April, which we thought ironically had less “value” (at lease we thought so).

And we tested with them their acceptance of the ideas of talking to plants, and GAIA as a concept of a plant guardian. Here are some pictures from what they came up with:

It is fascinating how the human mind works. It is even more fascinating how children mind works! We always seem to learn something new every time we work with the children at KidsLearningCode.

We started off with our team story (and we defined the problem we’ve solved), then the solution (the idea and the product that resulted). They were paying a lot of attention and asking questions. I think it was because our story was good and made sense to them. Later we asked them to define a problem for themselves amongst their table in order to solve it. Even as we aided them in doing that and gave them ideas — it interestingly seemed like they were having a hard time following up what we were saying. It wasn’t as simple of a “story”. Then it continued on to when we asked them to come up with solutions. Thankfully, Andrea adjusted on the fly and for the next part, explained the concept behind “if-statements” to them in a game of Simon Says. Now they were paying attention again. They understood everything we told them about if-statements. So for the last part of the workshop, we brought back the Sprite story again and told them to come up with their own version that solves their own problem (which is what we did last workshop, but we initially wanted to give them more room in this one). All of a sudden all of them were jumping on the tools to create their own Sprite. They remembered what the Sprite does from all the way at the beginning of the workshop. They started connecting it to problems they came up with. Then they built versions that yelled at pets that try to eat the plants (or heat them up then spray them in water!), one had a jetpack on the back because that’s how he wanted it delivered to the people who buy it, and one had glitter tapping shoes so that it dances for the plant and its owner!

I recently read about Sesame Street and another show called Blue’s Clues. What both shows really succeeded in was that they figured out that children at such young age typically cannot comprehend complex information (for example, for adults words like “tree” and “oak” can be used to describe one thing .. To children, they’re two separate things and using both words can get them seriously confused). Additionally, when it comes to children’ attention span, it turns out children only pay attention if there’s a story, and that story makes sense. This is how they retain information. Otherwise, if they get confused about the story, they lose attention and don’t retain the information in the story.