The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children
My child is 3 years old. I was looking for a game that we could play together and would be her first programming-like activity. I wasn’t keen to teach her anything specifically but rather offer her the option to explore what coding or algorithmic thinking tasted like (similarly when you would give your child a sheet of paper, brush, and paint to play with). I evaluated some computer game options but I wished to find screen-free, unplugged alternatives, especially since she has not been used to interact with a computer or screen at all.

There are many interesting screenless coding robots out there too, but I was imagining building something from the materials we had at home instead of purchasing a separate toy. Then I stumbled upon the ideas of coding a Lego maze and the coding card game which gave me the idea for inventing the xylophone maze.
Help papa find her daughter
You’ll build a Lego Duplo maze, place papa and her daughter at the far ends, and help papa find her daughter by following the instructions played on the xylophone.
The game is for a minimum of 2 players, can be played from quite an early age (2-3), and can be tweaked to make it challenging for older kids, even adults, too.
All you need is a xylophone (glockenspiel, or similar instrument) with colored bars, a bunch of Duplo blocks, a board and two figures. The colors of the Duplo blocks need to match the colors of the xylophone bars.

Instructions
- One player needs to take the role of the robot. They’ll play the papa who is looking for her daughter.
- The other player, aka programmer, plays the xylophone.
- The programmer can instruct the robot by hitting one of the colored bars. The robot then moves to one of the neighbouring blocks that have the matching color. The programmer must be careful to play a note that is a valid option. The robot can only move one block at a time.
- Once papa reaches her daughter, players can switch roles.
The difficulty can be easily adjusted to the needs and interests of the players. Here are some ideas:
- The xylophone bar can be played several times to help the robot figure out which block comes next.
- You can add roadblocks and Duplo blocks with colors that don’t exist on the xylophone to create detours.
- You can create a song (“Twinkle twinkle”) by purposefully placing the blocks for the way out.
- The robot must not look at what color bar was hit but rather carefully listen to the sound only.
- There can be additional robot players introduced. Not all moves will make sense to both of them, let’s see who reaches the end block first!
- Collectible items can be added to the map