🧍‍♂️ ➡️ ➡️ ⬇️ 🪣

A friend standing frozen, waiting for the next command, with a bucket on the ground ahead.

🎒 What you need

one friend, brother or sister willing to be the robot
a bucket, tin or cup placed across the room or yard
chalk or a stick

✋ Do this

Your friend is now a robot. Robots do NOTHING unless told. No thinking allowed.
Before they move, say every step out loud: 'Take four steps forward. Turn right. Take two steps. Bend down. Close hand.'
Run it. The robot must do exactly what you said — if you forgot 'bend down', they must grab at the air.
When it goes wrong, do not fix it by talking. Go back and change your list of steps, then run it again.
Keep fixing until the robot lifts the bucket. Then say your whole list out loud in one breath. That list has a name: an algorithm.
Swap places. Now you be the robot and feel how annoying a bad list is.

💡 Why it works

This is exactly what programming feels like. The computer is not being difficult — it is being perfectly obedient to instructions that were slightly wrong. Every programmer in the world spends their day doing what you just did: running the steps, watching them fail, and fixing the list.

🔥 Challenge

Write an algorithm for making tea, then make a grown-up follow it word for word. Try not to laugh when they pour water on the closed cup.

📖 New words

algorithma list of steps in order, like a recipe

buga step that is missing or wrong, so things go funny

🤖

Step Master

Tap when you have finished this module.