Code Club ideas: friends and family sessions

Code Club Champion Mia Chapman has been running her club for two years now. Here she talks about a recent session she ran in which her Code Clubbers taught their friends and families how to code.

With the summer drawing nearer, it was time to figure out how to end our second year of Code Club with a bang! We all agreed that this year we wanted to do something a little different, and after a round of votes from everyone, it was decided: the Code Clubbers were going to run their own session to teach their families how to code!

Together, we prepared, planned, and rehearsed until the big day arrived — and what a turnout! Our little computer room was full of mums, dads, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and friends, all eager to see what the Code Club kids had in store for them.

First up, one of the Code Clubbers gave an introduction to our new members. In his very best game show voice, he told our visitors that we organised the event so that they could see “how cool Code Club is!”

Next, our teams of Code Clubbers gave what they called their “circus pitches”. We had given each team a programming language (Scratch, HTML, Python, Sonic Pi, or micro:bit), and now it was their task to convince the visitors to join their activity for the session. As it turned out, they were all so convincing that it was difficult to choose, but we had to give extra points to Team Python for closing with their “turtley amazing” pun!

After our visitors had chosen the programming language they wanted to learn, the session went by in a flash, with everyone getting stuck in and trying out some Code Club projects. The families were totally engrossed, and we even had a mum make us a thank-you card based on the HTML project Happy birthday.

Of course we couldn’t end the year without an awards ceremony to celebrate everything our Code Clubbers had achieved, and we also gave a big thank you to our visitors for being resilient and diving in head-first. When the event finished, no one wanted to go home, and the parents finally understood why we struggle to get the kids to leave at the end of each week’s session.

Running a ‘friends and family’ session was a great way to celebrate the end of our second year and show off everything we’ve learnt without the pressure on our learners to have to present a project to a room full of people. Everyone had a great time, and it was fun for us volunteers to hand the teaching over to someone else for a change. We can’t wait to see what ideas our Code Club members come up with next!

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