“Everyone in this country should learn how to program because it teaches you how to think” – Steve Jobs
The mastery of technology is the future and our children are very blessed to have the exposure of the advanced use of technology whether it is from home, at school or in the community. Cannons Creek is a school that embraces this through introducing Robotics and Coding, as we believe that children are competent critical thinkers.
Therefore, in Grade R, we start introducing coding with the use of their bodies and BeeBots. BeeBot is a small programmable robot that engages the young learners. Beebots understands and uses four simple commands, such as straight, back, right and left. With these simple commands, a wide variety of activities can be done, such as moving to a target on the mat, creating a dance, following a maze, moving an object from one place to another, drawing and even picking up paper clips with magnets.
Before we use the BeeBots, the children practise with their bodies to pretend that they are a BeeBot. A friend gives the command which the little human BeeBots need to follow in order to reach a certain destination or achieve a goal. When programming a BeeBot, the children will need to use their critical thinking skills. While they input their instructions, they need to think about the sequential order of the instruction in order for the Beebot to perform the correct chain of commands, as each part of the command sequence has an impact on the following ones – like a ripple effect.