Constellation

Using sparkles to light the night sky. It is possible to make them ‘twinkle’ or use an LDR so they only light up in the dark.

Life in a Can

A cross-curricular resource for primary and lower secondary schools that investigates life and how it can be maintained in the harsh atmosphere of space.

The engineers and scientists who built the International Space Station are faced with huge challenges - everything needed to keep astronauts alive must be...

Traffic lights

Using sparkles to code flashing sequences. There are variations on difficulty including the introduction of switches.

Fireworks

An ideal lesson plan for the lead up to fireworks night! This is about making sparkles flash with random intervals and colours. It can also be made more difficult by using LDRs.

Christmas tree

An ideal plan for a Christmas themed coding lesson! This plan involves a Christmas tree that has sparkles lighting up as the baubles, but it is also possible to use other Christmas-related ideas (for example Christmas cards) that have the same code.

Dice

The dice uses sparkles and a code to make them flash randomly. What is the probability of the same numbers being picked and does that mean it is truly random? It is also relevant here to think about nets and dice shape.

Lighthouse

This uses a motor, a sparkle and a marble to imitate a lighthouse. It can be made harder by incorporating LDRs.

Morse code

Very simply, this involves making sparkles flash. The challenge is to work out how long a ‘dot’ and a ‘dash’ are, and to successfully code a message in Morse code.

Nightlight

Using LDRs and sparkles, the student learns how to code a nightlight coming on only once it gets dark. Digital switches can also be incorporated into this.

Pumpkin

Ideal for a Halloween-themed coding lesson! Using sparkles to mirror a candle in a pumpkin – can you make it flicker or only come on once it’s dark?