Board game teaching children programming

To begin with, I want to congratulate all Habrovsk citizens on the day of the programmer!
What to write about on this day, if not about a game that will allow you to raise young Steve Jobs or Ada Lovelace from your child.

Robot Turtles is a game from Google programmer Dan Shapiro.
It is intended for children from three to eight years, and it is very easy to learn to play it. Your kids will not even suspect that during the game they will build real algorithms and learn the basics of programming.

about the project

One of the advantages of the game are very simple rules. Each child takes a turtle and a deck of cards for her. For the first game from the decks, you need to exclude the laser cards and functions.



Then, on the playing field, you and the children build a labyrinth from special obstacle cards, and inside the labyrinth you also have the coveted Turtle Crystal.

There are only three rules in the game:

• Turtle control cards can be laid out only one at a time.
• Every time a child puts a card, we move his turtle.
• To win you need to reach the turtle treasure =)

So in the first game we have three cards:

• Left turn
• Right turn
• Move forward

Turn maps are very easy to figure out. Suffice it to say that turning to the left, the turtle turns to the yellow flower, to the right to the lilac, right it goes to the blue. These colors also appear in the border of the map.



In this form, the game could quickly annoy the children, so unlockable abilities and amplifications are added to it, as in video games:

• Ice walls
• Laser breaking through ice walls
• Laser resistant stone walls
• The ability to lay out 2-3 instructions cards for turtles at a time
• Debug program. Cards are laid out in a line and only at the end of the turtle sets off. Thus, the child will see the error only during the execution of the algorithm and will have to fix it.
• Map Functions of a frog. You can write a function from cards. A function call will move the turtle in fewer moves.

The game is based on the programming language Logo. The Turtles programming language is not Turing complete, but it can arouse a child's love of programming.

This game can teach:

• To experiment
• Find bugs
• Use a finite number of operations to complete a task
• Give the concept of the order of operations (Forward, forward, left is not Left, forward, forward)
• Program planning
• Functions and Function Optimization
• Children introduce you to the computer to which they give commands to control the turtles

Campaign progress and awards

The project started just lightning fast. He raised $ 231,906 in ten days. This is a lot for a board game without miniatures on Kickstarter.

The price of the game starts at $ 29, but this option is for Americans. We will have to pay $ 40 + $ 20 for international shipping.
The awards also include lunch with the author of the project, Den Shapiro, as well as dinner with the founder and CEO of Cranium Inc. Richard Tight and dinner with the creator of transmedia gaming and Chief Design Officer Xbox Entertainment Studios, winner of Emmy Ilan Leah.

These are such non-childish charges at a children's game.