Term-time · Ages 7–14

The AweSTEM STEM Roadmap

Our three Saturday courses are not three separate clubs — they are one ladder. A child joins where their age and experience put them, and climbs as their skill grows: from a robot they can hold, to games they design, to a professional programming language they type themselves.

The three stages

1Ages 7+
LEGO Robotics Programming
LEGO Education WeDo 2.0
A robot you can hold, and code that visibly moves it.
2Ages 8+
Coding & Arcade Programming
Scratch (MIT) + Microsoft MakeCode Arcade
The logic moves off the table and onto the screen.
3Ages 10+
Python Coding
Python 3
A real language, typed from scratch. This is programming.

What a child achieves at each stage

Every stage runs weekly through term time at Christ's College Guildford, and ends with work a child can show you.

LEGO Robotics Programming

Ages 7+

LEGO Education WeDo 2.0

Children start where a robot is something they can hold. Using LEGO Education WeDo 2.0, they build up to 15 working models — gears, motors, and tilt and motion sensors — and bring each one to life with block-based code that makes it drive, walk, lift, grab, spin or wobble. Because a change on screen has a visible effect on the machine in front of them, cause and effect is never abstract. Models rarely work first time, and working out why is where the real learning sits. Children leave this stage able to investigate a problem, model a solution and explain to the room how their build works.

What they can do by the end

Build and program up to 15 working robotic models from guided, step-by-step projects.
Control motors and read motion and tilt sensors to make a machine respond to the world.
Investigate, model and design solutions to real problems — the core of engineering.
Present a finished build and explain how it works.

Coding & Arcade Programming

Ages 8+

Scratch (MIT) + Microsoft MakeCode Arcade

With the mechanics of a robot behind them, children move the same thinking onto the screen. In Scratch they build interactive stories, animations and games; in Microsoft MakeCode Arcade they design playable retro arcade games with sprites, levels, power-ups and scoreboards. The concepts get real here — loops, conditionals, variables and arrays are the difference between a game that works and one that does not. MakeCode also shows the same program as JavaScript or Python alongside the blocks, so text-based code stops looking foreign long before a child has to write it. They finish this stage with games their friends actually want to play.

What they can do by the end

Use loops, conditionals, variables and arrays deliberately, to make a game behave.
Design multi-level arcade games with sprites, collisions, power-ups and scoreboards.
Debug systematically — change one thing, test, and try again.
See the same program as blocks and as text, ready for a real language.

Python Coding

Ages 10+

Python 3

This is the stage where children stop dragging blocks and start writing code. Python is one of the most widely used languages in professional software, data science and AI, and children learn it as the real thing — writing, running and debugging programs they have typed themselves. They work through loops, conditions, lists and arrays, functions and data structures, then use them to design algorithms that solve a defined problem rather than to complete a worksheet. Syntax errors, error messages and rewriting a working program to make it better are all part of the course, because that is what programming actually is. A child leaving this stage has the foundation that GCSE Computer Science and everything after it is built on.

What they can do by the end

Write, run and debug Python programs from a blank file.
Use loops, conditions, lists and arrays, and functions with confidence.
Design and implement algorithms and data structures for a defined problem.
Read an error message, diagnose the cause, and fix it independently.

When is a child ready to move up?

The ages above are the entry point for each stage, not a promotion rule. A child moves up when the work has stopped stretching them, whatever their age — and a child who already codes can start further along the ladder. These are the three signals we look for.

They plan before they build

A child ready for the next stage sketches out what they want to make before touching a keyboard, instead of assembling and hoping. That is the shift from following instructions to designing.

They find their own bugs

When something misbehaves, they narrow it down themselves rather than asking what is wrong. Debugging independently is the single clearest signal a child has outgrown a stage.

They want more than the tool allows

When a child starts asking for something the blocks cannot express, the tool has become the limit rather than the support — and the next stage is where they should be.

Not sure where your child starts?

Tell us their age and what they have built before, and we will point you at the right stage.

See the timetable and prices Ask us where they fit