Offline Coding Academy- Printable Games with Penguins

Your children will have fun creating algorithms that move them from the start to end on each of the printable games. While building a path on a game board, your children will be working on a number of coding skills. You will find a list of them later on in the post. The coding games are so much fun your children won’t realize they are learning as they explore them.

Wait! What is an algorithm?

A kid-friendly definition is that an algorithm is a series of steps needed to complete a task. Computer programmers or coders create the series of commands needed for a computer to complete a task. Your children complete algorithms or a series of steps to complete tasks every day. (You will find an everyday example of an algorithm on the How to Draw an Astronaut post.)

Getting Your Copy of the Printable Games

You can download your own set of the Offline Coding Academy- Penguin Algorithm Game Boards. Then you will want to print out the boards you want to use onto card stock. The games use arrow cards that come with the game boards. They will also need to be printed out onto card stock.

Hint: When the game boards and arrows are laminated, they will last longer.

Playing the Algorithm Games

You can play with the games boards in several different ways.

Your children can work out what path they want to follow to get from start to finish. Then they can put an arrow card in each space along their path. The arrows will need to point in the direction they will need to go to get from one square to the next.
Your children can place an arrow in the start box pointing the way they would need to go to get to the next open box. Then they will repeat this process as they make their way to the end box.

Coding Skills

Your children will look at how tasks can be decomposed into simple tasks.
Then they will look at how simple tasks can be composed to form complex tasks.
Children will use picture directions to design a series of steps to complete a simple task.
Finally, your children will test a series of directions to successfully complete a simple task.