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In this talk, I will share my own story about how I found the importance of being playful and playing games, in teaching coding and specifically, Turtlestitch. Students learn about making a square and then a polygon fairly easily, but making the important transition to coding more complex and more beautiful designs, the ones we all admire in life and find fascinating, is our real challenge.

There are many levels to learning. How can we take complex mathematical ideas, use them to create patterns that we can see and touch and treat that development process with the same energy and pleasure that we experience when we are positively challenged playing our favorite games? We have found that using Turtlestitch supports these goals.

When students design satisfying patterns, they are "playing" with the moves and the angles. I will deliver demos of how to treat the designing process as a playful game and find the beauty and joy in the results.

The geometry library found in Turtlestitch, which I built, is underused and not well understood. I will demonstrate its use, how it can be studied and learned and enjoyed. This library can be used to empower students and all learners to build powerful and complex designs.

Crafts made from the TurtleStitch codes will also be demonstrated. The crafts have yet another level of engagement because the objects themselves, can be used in physical games.

We find the fun and joy in coding in even the most simple code. How do we create a playful, environment, that is scaffolded to engage and challenge every coder at their own level and yet engages them so that they have the opportunity to grow and develop their own potential?