A local 11-year-old is enjoying learning some new coding tricks with the Saskatchewan Science Centre's Go! Girl Coding Workshops.

Ember Sim had already, in fact, made a piano using a Makey-Makey and her household staircase, and a piano using marshmallows, prior to being accepted into the program.

"I thought this was a big opportunity to learn how to do so many things with coding," said Ember, who was one of only 30 girls selected to take part in the program, which was designed for 11 to 16 year old girls.

"So the [piano on the] marshmallows and the stairs, I learn how to do myself," she shared. "When you tap certain marshmallows it plays a note on the piano, and it's kind of same with the stairs. When you walk up or down, it plays different notes."

She said she connected circuits going all the way down and up the stairs.

"I connected it to pieces of tin foil, and then basically it conducts electricity so that you can walk up and down and it plays piano," she said.

Ember said her dream job is to one day either be an animator for a company like Disney, or to be a game-coder.

"There are errors that happen in the coding and stuff like that, so it gets tricky sometimes, but I just love figuring things out with this," she shared. "I just love the end product of it and I feel so proud in the end, and that's one of the best feelings."

The workshop is, of course, virtual.

"We go on ZOOM, and we do ice-breakers at the beginning of the class, and every time we learn how to do something different," she described.

She said so far she has learned how to animate using Pixel Art, and to code using Scratch, and to code using Microbit.

"A lot of the leaders have jobs in coding too," she added. "One of them is working on a project where power is made from pressure when cars drive over the road and that power is used for street lights and other things, so there's a lot of leaders in my class working on a ton of different projects too."