Mere days left now until OggCamp 2019, it’s getting exciting! You may have seen talk about our first ever official kids track but what exactly does that mean? What activites might you expect to find there? Relax, sit back and allow to explain…

Thinking back to the first OggCamp in 2009 there’s always been a strong family presence. People with their kids enjoying the day and getting involved, just as it should be. Anyone remember the OggCamp baby? I’ll never forget walking through the exhibition at one of the Liverpool events and seeing a baby in the middle crawling around on the floor, playing and laughing. Despite my obvious worries about whether this was really completely safe our young guest was totally fine, her parents were watching nearby and it brought a nice atmosphere to see future generations at play.

Back then we didn’t have any content specifically aimed at kids or familes but they came and got involved anyway which was brilliant. Many times over the years we discussed the idea of a specific kids event, someone even coined the name SproggCamp which we didn’t use in the end but still deserves an honourable mention. So in this our 10th year it felt right to finally have a formal offering for young OggCampers and a dedicated room to run it.

In our first OggCamp kids track the day will be spent helping up to 30 children learn new skills using Micro:bit robotics. This session is ideal for kids aged 8-12, especially if they haven’t done any programming before. A laptop is required for coding your robot. However if you don’t have one don’t fret a simple robot can still be built in an hour, and who doesn’t want a robot huh? I know I do.

That’s not all though. In conjunction with Code Club North West there will also be the opportunity to take part in the Shaun The Sheep Movie competition. Code Club are challenging kids to create an animation in Scratch showing Shaun’s alien friend Lu-la going home. A full write up with instructions can be found at Code Club’s Shaun The Sheep Mission To Space Competition.

The kids track room will be open Saturday from 11am-5pm and there may even be a few other special surprises and activities to take part in. So if you’re bringing some young OggCampers along with you it’s well worth checking out.

Come and say hello :-)