Themed collection
A Year of Seasonal Unplugged
One screen-free computing lesson for every season — drop a rich, ready-to-run activity into the week your students are already excited about.
6 lessons · Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 · ~4 hr total
The calendar is the easiest hook there is. These lessons map a core computing idea onto the moment your room is already buzzing about — fireworks, a haunted house, holiday ornaments, valentines — so the thinking lands without a device in sight. Run them in order across the year, or pull a single one the week you need it. Every lesson is unplugged at its core and prints from the materials on its page.
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2027-06 · Unplugged + plugged · 40 min
Summer Scavenger Compression
Students shrink summer photo and emoji grids with run-length encoding — writing "5 blue" instead of five blue squares — discovering the smart trade-offs that let data move through the world, and the kind of engineering choices they could one day make.
Math · CS/Technology — grades 3-5, 6-8
Open lesson → -
2026-07 · Unplugged + plugged · 50 min
Plan the Fireworks Show
Students choreograph a summer fireworks show as a timeline of cues — discovering that some shells must fire in order while others can launch at the same time, and that the show's length is set by its longest chain of must-follow steps, not by how many fireworks there are. Then they run their timeline in a live in-browser sequencer that actually launches and bursts the cues, with sound, so the idea is something they can see and hear.
Math · Science · Arts · ELA · CS/Technology — grades 3-5, 6-8
Open lesson → -
2026-10 · Unplugged + plugged · 45 min
The Haunted Decision Tree
Students build a choose-your-path "monster classifier" on butcher paper — yes/no questions that sort creatures into types — and meet the core intuition scientists use to classify the living world, learning that whoever chooses the questions decides what's fair.
Science · CS/Technology · Elementary (multi-subject) — grades K-2, 3-5
Open lesson → -
2026-11 · Unplugged + plugged · 45 min
Gratitude Graph Coloring
Students color a "thankful-for" map so no two touching regions share a color, using as few colors as possible — meeting graph coloring, the math that quietly schedules exams, assigns radio frequencies, and routes the systems they could one day design.
Math · CS/Technology — grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
Open lesson → -
2026-12 · Unplugged + plugged · 40 min
Binary Ornaments
Students encode their initials in binary as bead or paper ornaments, discovering place value in base-2 — the simple on/off building blocks that the people who shape tomorrow's technology start from.
Math · Elementary (multi-subject) · CS/Technology — grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8
Open lesson → -
2027-02 · Unplugged + plugged · 45 min
Secret Valentine Ciphers
Students build paper cipher wheels to encrypt valentine messages with Caesar and keyword ciphers, then try to crack each other's with frequency analysis — meeting the math that keeps a whole community's messages private, and the kind of secure systems they could one day design.
Math · CS/Technology — grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
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