After our interesting day last Thursday I decided to introduce Bee-Bots to my Kindergarten class. The children loved them and were very keen to have a go. After some initial experimentation we used the shapes mat to practise our programming skills. Each child in the class was given the opportunity to program the Bee-Bot to move from one shape to another shape of their choosing. Whilst some children chose simple moves other children tried more complex moves requiring a number of turns. Our most common mistake was not pressing the forward key after programming a turn (the Bee-Bot turned in a circle a number of times).
After a while Peter set us a challenge: Could we make the Bee-Bot go around the outside of the mat until it reached its starting point? We decided to map our path using arrows to help us with programming. On our first attempt we went too far. We then decided to have Mary walk around the mat and record her steps and turns as she went. We then used this plan to program our Bee-Bot. On our next attempt we were successful. The whole class cheered. All the children were engaged in the activity. Alex asked if we could have the Bee-Bot again the next day and this time use the street map! This activity worked really well and the children used a lot of positional language as well as problem solving skills to achieve their result.
