Pac-man continues to entertain

Pac-man, the arcade game created in the 80’s was our chosen project for term 6. The children created their own versions of the game by drawing their own images. It was one of the longest projects we have ever done at coding club and to my surprise, the children never showed any signs of boredom with the game. Every week, they came to coding club looking forward to add to their projects.

The Pac-man game gave the children the opportunity to practice everything they had learned throughout the year by adding more layers of complexity to the game. Some of the children chose to create their sprites in Pixil art, a program that they learned how to use at coding club.

It gave me great pleasure to see the results and I know for sure the children thoroughly enjoyed it too. Here is a small selection of the projects created.

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Soft circuits at primary

One of the schools I work closely with had their Learning College program in late Spring. I had the opportunity to work with twelve children, who learnt the principles of electronic circuits, sewing and working collaboratively to produce an electronic bug and an interactive bookmark. It was great to see a 50:50 gender split in this workshop, which I hope to repeat again. If your school is interested, please get in touch.

The electronic bugs were made of felt and a sewn in with conductive thread that completed an electronic circuit. A switch button turned on the eyes (LEDs). In the process, the children learnt about electricity, sewing and how electronic circuits work.

 

We also used felt material for these bookmarks. The children sewed in a circuit with a push button behind the ‘nose’ that when pressed, lit up the cat’s eyes.