This is Science and Engineering week – a celebration of science and engineering. When we visited the Big Bang Fair at the NEC we watched the Kaboom! Show and on the way out we were given a leaflet about the Mentos Fountain Challenge. This looked like an ideal experiment to try with my children. The […]

I visited the Beamish open air museum with my son during the February half-term holiday, there were also special World War 2 events during the week. It was a sunny day which made a nice change, but as a result it was very popular at the museum. After we parked up we had to join […]

The Big Bang Science Fair is an annual event to promote the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and maths) to children. It’s a way of encouraging young people to study STEM and consider a STEM related career in future. This years show was held at the NEC in Birmingham with smaller local events called “Big […]

This is a Raspberry Pie recipe I created based on a Raspberry Curd bought from an an English Heritage gift shop. You can get the raspberry curd from most English Heritage gift shops (or from a local farm shop), or you can use raspberry jam available from any supermarket (seedless would probably be better). Ingredients […]

I’ve been looking to create a program with my eight year old daughter since running a Code Club at the end of last year. We’ve done some little bits in Scratch, but without a specific project I found my daughter became distracted. I also try and incorporate activities at home related to school projects they […]

We have visited the National Railway Museum in York several times, but this is the first time I’ve visited the sister museum in Shildon. Since my previous review of the National Railway Museum in York my son has taken a real liking to trains and railways. He’s become a big fan of one engine in […]

Recently I taught programming Scratch to some primary school teachers. One of the questions I was asked was about the youngest age that you could teach Scratch to. It’s a difficult question and as with all teaching it depends upon the ability of the child. I gave the answer that “Scratch is designed for children […]

As an adult I often try and imagine myself in my children’s shoes to try and think about how appropriate something would be for their age group. Usually I can get a reasonable idea of how well they will pick something up, but this review is one where my daughter has helped me to see what it is like to learn programming through a child’s eyes.

This is a review of the Fuze Raspberry Pi based computer.

In the past few years we’ve created a family craft project at Christmas. This has normally been a large Christmas picture. This year we have created a craft project using electronics and programming on the Raspberry Pi.

I’ve just finished a term of Code Club, teaching programming to primary school children aged 8 to 9. This is my experience of running the club. About Code Club Code club is a programming club aimed at primary school children designed to be run in a school or youth organisation. It’s run by volunteers, who […]