STEM

Activity Details

Time needed: 15 minutes

Materials needed:

• Maze Game Diagram and Coding Blocks handout
• Doll, stuffed animal, or another character
• 25 sheets of paper or a roll of masking tape

Setup:

What’s your favorite board game or videogame? How do you play it? What’s your favorite part? It might be the rules, the story, or just having people play together that make it great. And you know what? That’s because the person who designed the game came up with all those ways to make the game fun!

Did you know some people have the job of making digital games? A digital game can be played on a device, like a phone, computer, or TV. Game designers are the people who decide how the digital games will be fun and what they’ll look like.

Activity:

For this activity, you’re going to play a game and help a firefighter rescue a kitten. Your character needs to navigate the city (a maze) to reach the goal—the kitten! You'll use coding block commands to help your character do that.

To get started, create the maze and set up obstacles:

1. Print and cut out the obstacle coding blocks (buildings) and goal coding block (kitten) from the Maze Game Diagram and Coding Blocks handout. If you don’t have a printer, draw a firefighter, a kitten, and four buildings, each on its own sheet of paper.
2. Create a grid (5 x 5 or larger) on the floor using blank sheets of paper (8.5 x 11 in.). Make sure the boxes are big enough for your character to sit in.
3. Place the character (doll, stuffed animal, etc.) in the bottom left corner of the grid. This will be where the maze begins.
4. Place the goal coding block (kitten) in the top right corner of the grid. This will be where the maze ends.
5. Place the obstacle coding blocks (buildings) in the grid according to the diagram on page 1 of the handout.

Then, check out the commands you can use to move your character through the maze and around the buildings to the kitten:

• Turn Right: Turn to the right, do not take a step, stay in your square.

• Turn Left: Turn to the left, do not take a step, stay in your square.

• Jump: Jump over an obstacle and land in the next square. Jumping is not allowed if it takes you off the grid.

• Move Forward: Take one step forward. Characters cannot step off the grid.

To play the game, create an algorithm using the commands to move the character from the start of the maze to the kitten coding block (the goal).

Once you’ve rescued the kitten, move the goal, go back to the start, and create another algorithm to play again!

Troop Leaders:  The instructions for all badge steps are available free of charge in your  Girl Scout Volunteer Toolkit.

Girl Scouts at Home activities have been adapted from existing Girl Scout programming and optimized for use at home during a period of social distancing.