Big City Maps and Computational Thinking

You might already have one of these 'Big City Maps' playmats in your classroom, if so, you can use it for great 'unplugged' and 'plugged' Computational Thinking activities.
For unplugged use arrow cards that are roughly the same size as the cars that come with the mat. Students can guide the driver by planning their 'drive' to reach different buildings.
For plugged all of these robots move easily over the mat 'Blubot, Edison, MBot, mini sphero or large Sphero. These are all great position and orientation activities. Get students to design their own scenarios and plan trips, this could then integrate into writing as they write where they are going to and why.

I purchased my mat from Mitre 10 for $45. When you look on the website you will see different maps with different sizes. I saw a smaller one for $26.