Celebrate the New Year by Learning Programming

A fun way to teach kids to code is to celebrate an event. Last New Year's Eve, my kids celebrated the coming of the new year by building a countdown timer. As a Dad, I am proud to see how my son tried to explain the steps involved. Asking him parts of the code and what he learned. Check out the video:

Here are the blocks we used at https://makecode.microbit.org/

Here's the Javascript code:

let star2: Image = null
let star1: Image = null
let countingdown = false
let counter = 0
input.onButtonPressed(Button.A, () => {
    counter += 1
})
input.onButtonPressed(Button.B, () => {
    countingdown = true
})
star1 = images.createImage(`
    . . . . .
    . . . . .
    . . # . .
    . . . . .
    . . . . .
    `)
star2 = images.createImage(`
    . . . . .
    . . # . .
    . # # # .
    . . # . .
    . . . . .
    `)
counter = 3
countingdown = false
basic.forever(() => {
 basic.showNumber(counter)
 if (countingdown == true) {
 basic.pause(1000)
        counter += -1
 if (counter <= 0) {
            countingdown = false
 for (let i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
                star1.showImage(0)
 basic.pause(200)
                star2.showImage(0)
 basic.pause(200)
            }
 basic.showString("HAPPY NEW YEAR!")
        }
    }
})

If this project made you interested to learn more about Micro:Bit, javascript or about MakeCode, click the thumbs up/respect button and follow me. Thanks.