This is a great lesson for pupils at Primary or Elementary age. It might even be good for older pupils, especially boys.
You could do this on laptops or Pc’s using Microsoft Excel or similar. But you could just use squared paper and felt pens.
If you are using Excel then you need to adjust the column widths and row heights so that they form squares.

Lesson Plan:
When computer games were first developed the designers had only limited amounts of memory to work with. The games had to look good and the characters had to look appealing using only tiny squares of information called pixels. These days we play games that use gigabites of data, but early computer games used only 8 bits of data.

Despite this, the games looked great and were well loved. Some of these characters are still played today.

Answer the following questions in the way that you think is best. For example, you may want to produce a presentation on a computer using any software you think will work. Or, you might feel better writing and drawing everything by hand. As long as you answer the questions fully and incorporate pictures and writing you can do it in whatever form you wish. In fact, you might make a video or animation and do a voice over! Just make sure you have lots of cool pictures to illustrate your text.

Q. How did early games designers use pixels to design computer games? Show your answer in pictures.
Q. What are some of the rules of creating pixel art for computer games?
Q. How can you learn to create your own characters using pixels? (Remember, a pixel is a small square of data.)