Miroslav Suchý

DevConf.cz 2024 Day 3

On the third day of DevConf, I was in the kids' corner all day, which I ran together with Petr Blaho. I didn’t have time for anything else that day.

In the corner we had the Ada & Zengemann book by Matthias and a bunch of stickers.

We played a lot of Ricochet Robot - I like this game because quite often the one who comes up with an unusual and unexpected solution wins. Plus, an almost unlimited number of people can play at the same time and they all play at the same time. No waiting for a teammate to make a turn. The rules are so simple that they blur the distinction between an adult and a small child.

Mr. and Mrs. Mašláňovi brought Lego Coding Express - for me, it was the first time I’ve seen it live. A great educational toy for kindergartens. The Lego was pretty durable and I can definitely recommend it for kindergartens. What pleasantly surprised me was that you can print an adapter with which you can connect the original tracks to the wooden tracks they sell for wooden trains. Great!

I had a Cubetto for the little kids there. I also brought Lego WeDo and Micro:bit. Both were used and I gave two Micro:bits to kids who were interested. Hopefully they’ll make some things with them that they’ll enjoy.

We had about twenty kids hanging around all day. And by noon there were six (or maybe more) kids there at the same time, each at a different age - that was pretty wild.

One of the popular things was an Useless Box.

While I was at DevConf, my wife was on a wellness retreat with her sister, and she kept me supplied with photos from the retreat. So I tried to keep up and took a few pictures too.

If you have kids and you want to try something similar, you can use my notes (in Czech only).