Learn Coding without Computers

September 9, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

National Coding Week begins Sept. 14, so it’s a great time to teach your kids a little bit about coding. Of course there are all sorts of online resources to learn how to code, but it’s also fun, especially when kids are first starting to learn the concepts of coding, to work without a computer.

Concepts like pattern recognition and following step by step directions are essential in understanding the logic behind coding, and those things are easy to teach without a screen.

Carly and Adam has a good post about the first activities to introduce coding without a screen, including directional coding, retelling a story in sequence, and coding their own stories.

Little Bins for Little Hands has lots of great resources on coding for kids, including printable secret code worksheets that have kids follow instructions to make a drawing on a grid, and a collection of printable coding worksheets and other activities. Coding your name in binary is a classic.

Teach Your Kids Code is another great place to learn about coding for different ages of kids. A couple of fun examples are coding with a deck of cards and with magnet tiles. (Check out more activities using magnetic tiles.)

Speaking of common household items you can use to teach coding, another great option is to use Legos or other blocks to build mazes that help teach the basics of coding.

Team Cartwright has a great post on coding with Legos starting with the most basic skills (sorting into components and repeating patterns) and building on those basic skills to follow a code or write your own code.

Research Parent has a great activity for building a Lego maze with code, which includes printable base mazes to build as well as blank mazes so they can build their own. There are also printable coding phrases so you or your kids can write a code for going through the maze and see if it works. Older kids could write the code and then try to build a maze from those instructions.

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Activities and Crafts for Johnny Appleseed Day

Johnny Appleseed Day is sometimes celebrated on Sept. 26 because that is John Chapman’s birthday, but even if you’re just doing an apple unit study for fall it’s a great time to talk about Johnny Appleseed.

And that’s the place to start, that Johnny Appleseed was a real person named John Chapman who was born in 1774 in what was then the province of Massachusetts Bay. He traveled west when he turned 18 and despite the image of him randomly tossing apple seeds everywhere, he was really a deliberate planter of apple tree nurseries, which he left in the care of others and checked on every year or two.

Learn a little more of his story with these cute coloring pages (though not entirely historically accurate, they’re still cute) from Homeschool of 1. They also have a Johnny Appleseed themed word search printable.

This pin of a Scholastic News page doesn’t link to a website, but it gives you some basic information and a true and false quiz you can use with kids.

Crystal & Co. has a cute apple themed counting mini book you can print and use with your Johnny Appleseed unit. They also have some coloring pages with a bit of handwriting practice. Or practice cutting with the Johnny Appleseed themed worksheets from 3 Boys and a Dog.

Make a Johnny Appleseed puppet to help tell the story with this craft with a free printable template from Simple Everyday Mom. You’ll also find some cute printable worksheets there to learn his story and put it in the correct order.

Color, cut out and assemble this Johnny Appleseed drawing from Homeschool Preschool. They also have an apple seed counting activity you can use for practicing one to one correspondence.

Tiaras and Tantrums has a free printable apple unit that includes Johnny Appleseed facts and coloring pages, as well as how to say apple in different languages, tracing apple vocabulary, art project ideas, science experiments and more.

And if you need more apple themed activities to go with your Johnny Appleseed celebrations, check out my posts on apple crafts and apple learning activities.

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