Scratch
Scratch is a program available online that is designed to introduce children (and adults) to step by step coding on the computer. The result of the code is an animated sprite that you can have in a variety of backgrounds and costumes. The difficulty with this program is that some of the instructions are quiet complicated and don't necessarily do what you expect. We used this program with my Year 2 GPP class and we generally found that it took a lot of trial and error to get the sprite to do exactly what we wanted it to.
Daisy the Dinosaur
Daisy the dinosaur is an Ipad application (free to download) which is designed to teach children about the basics of computer coding and animation. In a similar way to scratch you use basic programing codes to animate daisy across the screen. This application is generally very good and I found it much easier to use than the scratch program (although the animation and options are more basic). The only drawback to this application is that it is only available on the Ipad and so only accessible in schools if you have access to them.Overall I find this a great introductory tool for teaching coding which many children can access at home as well as at school.
Bee-bots
Bee-bots are a fantastic tool to introduce step by step coding to EYFS and KS1, you programme the bot to move around a grid by telling it how many squares to move forward or backwards, which way to turn and continue to move on. The picture above shows an EYFS activity using the Bee-bot to explore countries on a map. The main difficulty with using the Bee-bot is teaching the children that they need to press clear to remove the previous instructions and re- program it.