Educational systems worldwide are including computer science (CS) education in compulsory curriculums from a very young age. Many activities have been proposed to teach young children CS which include different approaches such as unplugged, physical computing, or completely virtual programming interfaces. Despite this, more research is needed to understand which pedagogical approaches capitalise on young children’s cognitive and affective capacities throughout their development to promote learning outcomes. Grounded cognition (GC) proposes that our perception and thought are highly influenced by our bodily experiences and that dynamic actions such as movement affect our understanding of the world around us. For young children, experiences integrating cognitive and sensory-motor aspects are often used. These activities could be conceptualised as grounded activities, as they incorporate concrete representation and action. However, the extent to which these activities impact children’s learning outcomes has, to our knowledge, not been explored thus far. Moreover, the theoretical background informing these activities and how these map onto the grounded cognition background is often an under-reported aspect in the literature. This study aims to bridge this gap by conducting a systematic literature review. We identified empirical research reporting CS learning activities with a grounded cognition approach and analysed its activities, CS concepts targeted, how their theoretical background informed their pedagogical design and their outcomes. This paper has important implications for computer science education. Firstly, it presents the empirical evidence using this theoretical background with an emphasis on activity design, which will be useful for academics or practitioners looking to incorporate grounded cognition theory into their instruction. Secondly, it identifies significant gaps in the current practices, specifically in the links between theory and practice and thus is a stepping stone for further research in this interdisciplinary area.