Tangible Coding for kids with AI inside

In this paper we present the tangible coding activity we proposed as an interactive laboratory at the Festival della Scienza in Genova, Italy, in 2018 and 2019. Our goal was to disseminate basic principles of coding in a fun and accessible way, reaching young children. In the activity, each participant was given a small set of 3D shapes - the language - and very simple rules on how to use them to build a tangible sentence as an ordered sequence. We designed an Artificial Intelligence module that given an image of the shapes sequence, is able to identify and recognize the shapes, associating them with a label, and finally produce a fantasy sentence or a small story. Overall, more than 1000 participants attended the laboratory, confirming the potential of the activity and highlighting many possible future improvements.