Every child starts on the rung that fits them, not the one that matches their birthday. There are four tracks, and they run in order: Scratch, then Python, then robotics, then AI. Each one is eight one-hour lessons and ends with a finished project your child made themselves and can show at home. A child moves up when the coach and the child agree they are ready — not automatically at the end of a term, and never before they are comfortable.
What follows is what your child will actually do in each track, week by week. Days, times and prices are in the table above.
Code Club: Scratch
The first rung, for ages 7–9. Block-based coding, where an idea turns into something moving on the screen inside the first ten minutes.
What your child will learn
- Puts instructions in order so a sprite does one thing after another — and works out why it did them in the wrong order.
- Uses a loop to repeat a pattern instead of copying the same block ten times.
- Starts an action with an event: the green flag, a key press, a click.
- Draws and switches costumes so a character walks, jumps or reacts.
- Keeps a score in a variable and makes it change during play.
- Finds a bug by running a project one piece at a time, which is most of what coding is.
The eight weeks
| Week | What we do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Meet Scratch — move a sprite around the stage and make it talk. |
| 2 | Events — green flag, key presses, clicking a character to start something. |
| 3 | Loops — repeat a pattern, draw a shape, save yourself a hundred blocks. |
| 4 | Costumes and sound — a character that walks, jumps and makes a noise. |
| 5 | Variables — keep score, show lives on screen. |
| 6 | If and else — collisions, losing a life, winning the level. |
| 7 | Build level two — your own design, your own rules. |
| 8 | Share and show — play each other’s games and fix one last bug. |
What they take home
A playable two-level game they designed themselves, saved so it can be opened and played at home.
Ready for this if…
Your child can read simple on-screen instructions and use a mouse or trackpad. No coding at all needed.
Code Club: Python
Ages 9–11, after Scratch or something like it. The step from dragging blocks to typing real code, taken slowly enough that nobody gets lost in punctuation.
What your child will learn
- Prints to the screen, and asks a question with input and uses the answer.
- Stores words and numbers in variables, and knows why “7” and 7 behave differently.
- Makes the program choose with if, elif and else.
- Repeats work with a for loop and waits for something with a while loop.
- Keeps a list, adds to it, takes from it and counts it; wraps repeated code in a function.
- Reads an error message and works out which line to go and look at.
The eight weeks
| Week | What we do |
|---|---|
| 1 | First lines of code — printing, quotes, running a program. |
| 2 | Asking questions — input and variables, a program that knows your name. |
| 3 | Numbers and text — why “7” plus “7” is not 14, and how to fix it. |
| 4 | If, elif, else — a program that decides what to do. |
| 5 | For loops and turtle graphics — patterns drawn by code. |
| 6 | While loops and lists — a guessing game that remembers your guesses. |
| 7 | Functions — and the start of the term project. |
| 8 | Share and show — play each other’s games and read each other’s code. |
What they take home
Their own text adventure or quiz game, as a Python file that runs on any computer with Python installed.
Ready for this if…
Your child has done Scratch or similar and is happy typing. Spelling does not have to be neat, but it does have to be exact — that is one of the things this term teaches.
Robotics Lab: micro:bit and robotics
Ages 10–14. Code that leaves the screen: sensors, motors and a robot that has to work in a real room rather than an ideal one.
What your child will learn
- Reads an input — a button, a light sensor, a temperature reading — and makes something happen because of it.
- Drives outputs: the LED display, sound, a servo, a motor.
- Uses the accelerometer to detect tilt, shake and direction.
- Sends a message by radio from one micro:bit to another.
- Wires a motor driver and a line sensor safely, and checks a circuit before powering it.
- Changes one thing at a time when a build does not work, and writes down what changed.
The eight weeks
| Week | What we do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Meet the micro:bit — LEDs, buttons, your first program running on hardware. |
| 2 | Inputs and sensors — light, temperature, and the accelerometer. |
| 3 | Radio — two boards talking to each other across the room. |
| 4 | Motors — wiring a driver board and making wheels turn. |
| 5 | Steering — turning, timing, driving a set path on purpose. |
| 6 | Sensors on a robot — following a line or avoiding an obstacle. |
| 7 | Design the course, build for it, test it, fix it. |
| 8 | Race day — run the course, then share and show. |
What they take home
Their code and their design notes for the robot they built. The kit itself stays with the club, so the next term can build on it.
Ready for this if…
Your child can stay patient with something that does not work the first time. No electronics knowledge needed, and no kit to buy.
Robotics Lab: AI foundations
Ages 11–14, the top rung. What machine learning actually is, done hands-on, with data the children collect themselves.
What your child will learn
- Explains the difference between a program somebody wrote and a model that was trained.
- Collects and labels their own examples, then trains an image or sound classifier on them.
- Tests a model on purpose, including with examples designed to fool it.
- Sees what thin or lopsided training data does to the answers, and fixes it by collecting better data.
- Writes a clear prompt and judges honestly whether the answer is any good.
- Can say out loud what these tools cannot do, and why that matters.
The eight weeks
| Week | What we do |
|---|---|
| 1 | What “learning” means — training something versus programming it. |
| 2 | Collect the data — your own images or sounds, labelled properly. |
| 3 | Train the first classifier, and watch it get things wrong. |
| 4 | Testing on purpose — try to break your own model. |
| 5 | Bias — what happens when the data only ever shows one kind of thing. |
| 6 | Wiring it up — the model triggers something real, on a micro:bit or on screen. |
| 7 | Build the term project. |
| 8 | Share and show — demonstrate it, and say what it still gets wrong. |
What they take home
A trained classifier doing a real job in the room, and an honest list of the things it gets wrong.
Ready for this if…
Your child has finished a Robotics Lab term, or already codes confidently. Curiosity matters more than maths on this track.
AI tools are used only with a coach in the room, after the coach has explained what the tool is doing, and never on a child’s personal account. The rules we work to are set out in our safeguarding policy.
Holiday bootcamps
Bootcamps are condensed versions of the same ladder, run over a few short days in the school holidays instead of an hour a week. A child who comes to a bootcamp builds one bigger thing from start to finish, and children who have never been to the club are welcome. Dates are announced each term — message us on WhatsApp and we will tell you what is coming up.