Mrs. Nicolaou, Lower School technology teacher, has been working in the Lower School for over 10 years. As technology has changed ever so rapidly over the years, the Lower School technology program has as well to include a number of current applications that are exciting to young children. Below is an article submitted by Mrs. Nicolaou that provides a glimpse into programming with our students in preschool 4. Stay tuned for other articles about Mrs. Nicolaou and her work with Lower School students.

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Bee-Bots and Find Friends in Preschool 4:

Submitted by Christine Nicolaou

Our preschool 4 children are being introduced to robotics and programming using little robots called Bee-Bots. Easy to operate and friendly, these little robots are a perfect tool for teaching sequencing, estimation, problem solving and, of course, having fun!

Bee-Bots can remember up to 40 commands. They can be programed to move forward, backward, turn left or right by pressing the arrow keys located on the body. Once the sequence is entered, the child presses the GO key to send Bee-Bot on its way.

Bee-Bot stops, beeps, and blinks after each step so the child can follow along as it executes the program. Our children love to teach Bee-Bot how to move from place to place and distinguish between left and right just like they do.

Mats are available to use with the Bee-Bot. The one shown in the picture below is made up of a simple grid of 6-inch boxes that corresponds to Bee-Bot’s moves. The children were given challenges to program the Bee-Bot to move thru the grid toward a letter or number that was placed in one of the squares.

As programming and robotics are important 21st century skills, these early experiences will give our students an introduction to the basic concepts while solving challenges that build their confidence and knowledge in sequencing, letter recognition, math facts and more.