Arcade

Every week in this six-lab series, kids code their own version of a classic arcade game. Each one needs a new idea to work. A score that keeps count. A wall you can't walk through. A hundred enemies made from one. The rules are theirs: how fast it goes, how hard it gets, what happens when you lose. Then someone else plays it, which is how you find out if it's any good. By the end, each kid has a small arcade of their own, and can tell you how every game in it works.

We keep our classes small on purpose: ten kids max, one afternoon a week. It's a warm, focused little room, sometimes chaotic (though we prefer the word "energetic"), where every child gets real attention, and everyone gets to experience the aha moment of "I did it!"