Designing the White House Christmas Tree

To kick off Episcopal Day School’s participation in Hour of Code, fourth graders spent the morning participating in madewithcode.org‘s December Design a Holiday Tree project. Students go online and design a light display for one of trees (one for each state and US territory) that surround the larger White House Christmas tree. The students are using a basic coding program called Blockly to choose colors, patterns, and movements for their tree lights. Once finished, the students can choose a particular state/territory tree where they would like their lights to appear. After students submit their designs, they are given the date and time their light pattern will actually appear on that tree in Washington, DC. Participants can go to whitehouse.gov/live to view the live stream of these trees each evening at those designated times.