Analyzing Viscuit Programs Crafted by Kindergarten Children
Takeshi Watanabe, Yuriko Nakayama, Yasunori Harada, Yasushi Kuno · 2020
Viscuit is a programming language developed in Japan. With Viscuit, children can move and change multiple pictures on the screen using picture rewriting rules. Viscuit's distinguishing feature is that the program is expressed solely with pictures and their layouts without any letters. Therefore, Viscuit is very suitable for pre-school children. As an experiment, we carried out regular programming lessons using Viscuit in a kindergarten for one year in 2017. Through these lessons, we taught four Viscuit techniques. In this report, we analyze the programs made by 5-6 year old children in the final lesson of the 13 lessons. Our research question is how kindergarten children make Viscuit programs to express their ideas. We analyzed the kinds of programs children made to express their ideas by applying what they have learned in the previous 12 lessons. We let children make programs based on the operetta in which they were going to perform in the kindergarten graduation ceremony. As a result, 85.7% of children made valid programs and used multiple programming techniques effectively.