A whole ‘manor’ of free spooky coding activities for your children to tackle this Halloween!
With half-term on the horizon, it can be challenging to find activities to keep children entertained. Code Ninjas, kids coding specialist, is here to spookily solve that problem! As Halloween falls just before the kids go back to school, the team at Code Ninjas have put together a whole host of free activities that children around the country can tackle this half-term.
As part of its annual Halloween campaign – which this year is called ‘Welcome to Transylvania: Dracula's Manor of Code’ – the brand has launched three new online coding challenges – ‘Laundro-Bat!’, ‘DayBreak Deadline’ and ‘Castle Quest’. These challenges take kids on a thrilling adventure through Dracula’s Transylvanian manor, where they will need to complete gaming levels to get him back to bed before the sun comes up, scare ghoulish ghosts away from his laundry and even save his much-loved pet bat!
The challenges are available to play now: https://forms.codeninjas.com/halloween22
In celebration of the spookiest season, many Code Ninjas locations are planning special Halloween events this half-term. Sign up for a free trial at your local Code Ninjas to gain some truly scary ninja coding skills, and learn more about how they are supporting their communities with interactive learning opportunities to local kids.
And if trick-or-treating isn’t your thing, Grant Smith – VP of Education at Code Ninjas – has come up with a whole host of other free activities your children can complete this half-term!
“I have three kids of my own, so I know how difficult it can be to keep them engaged during the school holidays,” explained Grant. “Especially when you can’t rely on the warm weather to entice them to get out and exercise! These activities have been created specifically to exercise another important muscle – the brain. And you don’t even need access to a computer for all of them!”
Build your own mini-game!
Head to Scratch and click on CREATE:
1 – Add two sprites! This can be done by clicking a blue button near the bottom right of the screen that has a cat image on it.
2 – Now, head to the left-side task bar to click the yellow circle “Events” and drag over the “When (green flag icon) Clicked” event which will run any code attached when the green flag icon is clicked – go ahead and click it.
3 – Next click the light orange circle “Control” and find the forever loop to attach to the “When (green flag icon) Clicked” step. Anything you put inside this piece will occur again, and again, and again, without stopping.
4 – Find the blue circle “Motion” tab to the left and grab the “point towards (mouse pointer)” to put in the loop. Once there, change the (mouse pointer) drop-down menu to show the name of one of your sprites.
5 – Now, add another motion task “move 10 steps.” This will cause the sprite that you did not mention in step 4 to head towards the one you did without stopping! But why not add some more directions to make your mini-game work a little better?
6 – Click on the sprite to the right that you listed in step four, and then follow steps two and three again – but this time use the “repeat until” loop.
7 – Scroll down the “Control” menu to find the blue sensing task of “touching (mouse pointer)” which you will drag onto the “repeat until” piece. Change the drop down to the sprite, to not “mouse pointer” or “edge” to tell it that when your sprite touches the other, that is when this next loop will end.
8 – Now go back to the blue circle “Motion” and add “go to (random position)” but this time change the drop down to “mouse pointer”. This will have your sprites chasing each other as long as you have your mouse on the sprite listed in step four!
Now it’s up to you to add more! Maybe change their size, position them differently, or add speech bubbles so each sprite can say something.
Create a binary bracelet!
1 - Click this link and download the free binary bracelet help sheet, using the section at the bottom of the page to create your free paper bracelet: www.stem.org.uk/resources/elibrary/resource/362279/binary-bracelets
2 - Assign a separate colour for full boxes, empty boxes, and spaces.
3 – If you’re using the printable version - so just writing the first letter of our name in code - simply write your letter’s binary code details in the blank boxes.
4 – And if you’re making a bracelet (or necklace) out of beads, you can create your entire name in binary code! Simply pop on as many beads as you need for each section of the code – and then challenge your family to decipher the code!
To find out more about your local Code Ninjas’ plans this Halloween, or to learn more about opportunities for kids near you, visit codeninjas.com