This paper describes a work in progress of using animation software tools to teach programming principles. The motivation behind this work is to encourage students in higher education who do not see themselves as serious programmers to engage with some of the concepts and methods used in the teaching of programming. In addition this work was used in workshops to engage with local and regional secondary schools focussing on the use of animation as a tool for learning programming principles. The results presented in this paper are based on feedback from first year undergraduate students. Initial feedback from teachers, pupils and schools has been very positive and requests for additional visits have been made. This has created an opportunity to further engage with these schools for additional workshops. Analysis and feedback from these schools will be presented in the workshop.