Employing learning processes that promote 21st Century skills is now a
requirement in Finnish schools and elsewhere. Participatory
design/co-design activities have shown to foster design thinking and
computational thinking skills in primary school level participants, but a
lightweight applicable model of such an activity is yet to be
presented. We develop a lightweight hybrid co-construction method based
on software development via two exploratory case studies in a Finnish
primary school. For the purpose of evaluating objectively the motivating
effects of our activity, we elaborate upon four concerning dimensions
that arise from previous studies. In our resulting activity, an adult
programmer is partnered with a group of children to, in this case,
construct math games together. The children felt empowered and motivated
by working with us in this way, however, further study is required on
the effects this kind of an activity has in comparison to alternative
teaching methods.