Tablets take programming home!

With programming becoming such a crucial part of the new curriculum it is vital that we make sure we are enabling children to experience programable technology as early as possible! One fantastic way of doing this is through the use of APP's on both Android and IOs devices.
Below I hope to list a few of the APP's that we use in school with a brief description and age range.
I have started adding an APP of the week section in our weekly newsletter as most of the children use these devices at home, the feedback I have recieved has been fantastic with parents telling me their children have been teaching them at home.

Daisy the Dinosaur is a fantastic APP to introduce keystage 1 to the idea of programming and sequencing of instructions. The children work through a series of challenges to get Daisy to complete a set of tasks. As the challenges go on the children are introduced to more complex codes as well as the use of variables. Available of IOs devices.

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Hopscotch is an APP that is freely available on IOs decives and would normally be introduced at early Key Stage 2. It builds on the idea of Daisy the Dinosaur and requires the children to use Blocks to animate a character. The children can they link these controls to the accelerometer in the device to allow the user to play their game. The characters that come with this APP are bright and colourful and the children love being able to experiement with all the different blocks on the screen.

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An APP that can be introduced as young as foundation stage is the great free APP called 'Kodable'. In Kodable children have to guide their fuzzy character through a series of challenging mazes using directional blocks. As the levels continue the children can start to add variable blocks to change the direction in which their fuzzy character travels. I have used this game with year 1 children and the quality of their language is amazing!

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@JholmesICT
Jholmes@educ.somerset.gov.uk