- Choose a few students to be "islands." They will hold cards identifying their island, with secret instructions on the back.
- Position the islands randomly around the room or playground.
- The rest of the students (pirates) are given a map and must navigate a route from Pirates’ Island to Treasure Island, marking it carefully on their maps.
- To go from island to island, pirates must choose between ship "A," and ship "B".
- "Island" students will use the secret instructions to tell the pirates where the ship they choose will take them.
- Ask students who finish quickly to try to find more than one route.
- To connect this activity to finite-state machines, explain that each island represents a state in a finite-state machine, and each ship represents a transition.
- Check out the CS Unplugged Finite-State Automata Activity for more details.