In Japan, learning programming becomes compulsory in elementary school education from 2020. In response to this, Miyagi Co-op held a short-term course for elementary and junior high school students on a trial basis for half a year starting from October 2017, and from 2018 switched to a full-fledged operation of "Co-op Programming Club" to teach school children programming. From 2019, the co-op is offering four types of programming learning materials by age, targeting a wide range of ages from preschoolers to elementary school children.

"Co-op Programming Club" is not for learning programming languages, but for the purpose of learning the concept of programming using specialized blocks and robots, etc., and cultivating creativity, logical thinking ability, and problem solving ability.

In the preschool children's learning materials, puzzles and robots are assembled. It emphasizes cooperation among the students and learning through trial and error. One of the purposes is that the preschool children could understand the lecturer's instruction and be able to present one’s own opinion and ideas.

For lower grade elementary school children, a dedicated tablet and a robot assembly kit is provided for study at home. One of the main characteristics is that the robot is customizable using things in one’s home, and each step takes about 30 minutes.

The learning materials for higher grade elementary school children use a computer customized for child usage and a robot tool set to learn robot operation by a programming language. It focuses on enhancing each student’s teamwork skill through collaborative work towards a contest.

The parents of the students are provided with a special web page to be able to manage the schedule of classes together with “proficiency test in accordance to each child’s progress of learning.

The number of students has increased more than three times from 2017 to 2019.