Months ago, I backed a KickStarter project called Robot Turtles, a board game designed to teach kids fundamental concepts of programming. I had been thinking about using programming as part of our home school curriculum, and this was a great place to start. We received Robot Turtles just before Christmas, and it was one of the gifts opened during our Airstream Christmas.

At the request of the kids, we pulled out the game and figured out how to play. I recorded one of our games to share.

The game is played with an adult acting as the Turtle Mover and the other players acting as Turtle Masters. Turtle Masters cannot directly move their turtles, and must use the instruction cards to instruct the Turtle Mover as they move pieces on the board game. The game action cards include Right, Left, and Forward, as well as Laser, Bug and the Function Frog. The Function frog teaches code reuse. The Bug is for when they incorrectly instruct their Turtle and want the Turtle Mover to reset their game piece. The game does not include loops or conditionals, but otherwise does a great job teaching the basics to kids.

When I say kids, I mean all of them. Rachel and Andrew play very well, but even little 3 year old Cara understands the concepts and plays well. She is more easily distracted, and frequently directs her turtle  out of the way to ‘laser blast’ an ice wall. Despite her shenanigans, it is very clear that she understands the basic ideas.

Jess took the kids to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas this week, and the kids rocked the ‘program a robot’ exhibit. I didn’t get to see it happen, but Jess was ridiculously excited about how well our kids were able to program the robot to navigate the maze.

Today for #roadschool my kids programmed robots to navigate a maze. #soproud #currentlywandering #astc #Dallas #texas #PerotMuseum

There will be more Robot Turtles (and related teaching tools) in our future.