Teach a Kid to Code a Holiday Card

HolidayRecipe

Happy holidays from my little volunteer group at www.TeachingKidsProgramming.org.  To celebrate the season we’ve written a new recipe for you to share with your kids – teach them to code and make a custom holiday card at the same time!

Here’s a sample output, but of course you can change anything about your card, because you are coding it (together):

You’ll need

1. SmallBasic – FREE download

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2. SmallBasic Extensions (CodePlex) – FREE download and install via instructions on Codeplex (Here)
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To Install Extensions (Instructions):

a) Unzip SmallBasicFun.zip, two files will be created. Create a folder named 'lib' in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\SmallBasic

b) Copy SmallBasicFun.dll and SmallBasicFun.xml into a folder named 'lib' at C:\Program Files\Microsoft\SmallBasic\lib

3. Our recipe (SmallBasic wiki)

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4. Are you stuck trying to translate the recipe into code?  Use our CHEAT SHEET – here (scroll down on the page!)

If you want to distribute your card, save the output (cardName.exe) and the SmallBasic.dll and SmallBasicFun.dll files onto a flash drive and have the recipient click the cardName.exe and enjoy.

We’d love to see what you and your kids code up – send us screen shots via this blog – enjoy, happy holidays and merry coding!