Bee-Bot Buzz - February 2025

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Volume III, Issue 4 ~ February 2025

Greetings!

Bee-Bot Buzz helps you make the most of the Bee-Bots, Blue‑Bots, and other related STEM products we offer for your young learners. Engage students in curriculum concepts and problem-solving with these fun robots and find out how other educators use them.

In this issue:

New! Jacket Collection
Meet Daphne McMenemy and Discover Gracie
California Wildfires Claim Bee-Bots, Blue-Bots, and Pro-Bots
Are Your Students Confused by Bee-Bot?
Quick Links to Resources

Click to view archives of past Bee-Bot Buzz issues.

New! Jacket Collection

We have updated our jacket offerings for Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots. Now all jackets come in 6-packs.

New to the group is our "Jacket Collection," with two of each type of jacket: 2 "Bee-signer" Jackets, 2 Pusher Jackets, and 2 Pen Holder Jackets.

This collection is great for trying out different jackets and for teachers who have fewer robots in use.

Teaching ideas for these jackets—as well as for other accessories—are available in Terrapin Resources.

You can also explore using the Pen Holder Jacket in a specially designed Pen Holder emulator mat. You may be surprised at the way Bee-Bot draws!

Meet Daphne McMenemy and Discover Gracie

Daphne McMenemy, educator, author, and speaker, is passionate about finding new and creative ways to engage her students. In 2019 she wrote Gracie, a book about a little girl whose teacher introduces her to coding using a small robot named GoBot.

Together we created a set of emulator mats featuring Gracie and GoBot. The mats align with the characters and settings from the Gracie books. Each mat helps students learn through hands-on, interactive play, just like the adventures Gracie has in the stories.

Read Daphne's Customer Story and check out her online mats and task cards in our Teacher-Created Mats Center.

The Gracie series, based on Daphne's experiences in the classroom, has since expanded to three fiction stories and two nonfiction teacher resources.

Discover more about Gracie.

Learn more about Daphne McMenemy.

California Wildfires Claim Bee-Bots, Blue-Bots, and Pro-Bots

The California wildfires have been devastating, destroying both human lives and property. We were saddened to learn that among the thousands of structures that burned were many schools that were partially or totally lost.

Three teachers sought Terrapin's help. One was Valerie Belt, who recently sent us her Continents Bee-Bot Mat to add to our Teacher-Created Mats Center. She had also sent us the delightful story of how her students "discovered" Bee-Bots in her school. She told us how she had lost everything in her computer lab that she had put together over her 21 years there, including all of her Bee-Bots, Blue-Bots, and many mats.

Terrapin has provided donations and discounts to help these educators start to rebuild their programs. It will take much time and many resources for them to get back to even close to where they had been.

It's hard to imagine the impact of the fires on these schools and on the lives of their teachers and students. We are sorry for their losses and hope their STEM programs are restored soon.

Are Your Students Confused by Bee-Bot?

Are your students confused by Bee-Bot's moves and turns, especially in the Bee-Bot Online Emulator? They may expect Bee-Bot to move straight ahead when they press a turn button. They might press the Back arrow thinking Bee-Bot will move in the direction the arrow is pointing and be surprised when Bee-Bot backs up!

Here are some tips to help clear things up for your students. They are different ways of achieving the same result: to help students understand that forward means to go the way Bee-Bot is facing. Different strategies may work for different children.

1. Ask your students to look at Bee-Bot's buttons. “Which buttons move Bee-Bot forward and back? Which buttons turn it? Which button makes Bee-Bot go straight ahead?”

2. Play a Bee-Bot game away from the computer. One student is a human “Bee-Bot”. Other students give “Bee-Bot” commands to move and turn.

3. Click the check box to turn on the "Talk to me!" feature in the Bee-Bot emulator. Each command will now be spoken before Bee-Bot runs it. The audio feedback slows down the process, helping students follow Bee-Bot's actions.

4. Have your students put themselves in Bee-Bot’s position. If they get out of their seats, they can point themselves in the same direction as Bee-Bot. They need to become the Bee-Bot!

5. Students can raise an arm in front of them with their fingers pointing the way Bee-Bot faces. Pressing the Forward button means to send Bee-Bot in the direction their fingers are pointing.

6. Students can use a paper Bee-Bot to experiment with turning and moving it before entering commands.

7. Lay out cards with a sequence of Bee-Bot commands to help students plan ahead and press the right buttons.

Have you faced this situation?

A Bee-Bot Buzz reader recently asked:

I love the online Bee-Bot emulator! The only thing is that for younger students, grades K–2, when the bot turns, but the arrows on the screen still point up, students get confused at how to make the bot go forward. Because the turn arrow is pointing in the correct direction, they would click that and not the forward arrow, which is facing up. Any thoughts on how to handle this?

What will happen next if you press the arrow that is pointing down? Or the arrow at the left, under Home? Will Bee-Bot move ahead, back, or turn?

In time, your students will learn to think from the perspective of Bee-Bot, and understand that the Forward arrow tells Bee-Bot to go in the direction it is facing, not where the arrow points.

This article—"Bee-Bot Didn't Do What I Told It!"—offers several challenges for students to try. Watching them try these activities will give you insights into how they are thinking about Bee-Bot moves and turns.

Emulator Fun!

Move and turn an online Bee-Bot wearing a Pen Holder Jacket! Can you predict its actions?

Click to roll 4 dice and code Blue-Bot to circle their sum

in this Exploring Math

with Blue-Bot activity.

Valerie Belt, from Palisades

Charter Elementary School,

recently shared this

Continents emulator mat.

Quick Links to Resources

Bee-Bot Lessons ~ for Bee-Bot and Blue-Bot! Explore 200 lessons and 600+ online activities for K–2 learners in all curriculum areas.

Preview it!

Problem-Solving with Bee-Bot ~ 150 challenges to try in the classroom or online. Preview it!

Exploring Math with Blue-Bot ~ Coding fun with Blue-Bot while practicing math skills. Preview it!

Kinderlogo ~ Creative math activities organized in 5 levels for K–3 learners to explore online. Preview it! or Get a 30-day Free Trial!

52 Ideas for Kinderlogo (free) ~ Booklet to get you and your students started with Kinderlogo. Included are lessons for each of the five levels.

Lessons Ideas (free) ~ Get teaching tips for all our learning mats and other accessories.

Accessories Chart (free) ~ Which accessories and curriculum products work with each robot?

Customer Stories (free) ~ See how others use 'bots and other technology. Send us your story!

Bee-Bot Online Emulator (free) ~ Explore with Bee-Bot in your web browser using a variety of mats.

Blue-Bot Online Emulator (free) ~ Navigate Blue-Bot using both 45° and 90° angles and repeat loops.

Teacher-Created Mats (free) ~

Try some fun mats that educators have made for you and your students to use.

Monthly Emulator Mats (free) ~ A new mat to explore every month!

Coding Journeys (free) ~ Compare Bee-Bot, Blue-Bot, and Pro-Bot in 14 sets of free online activities.

We Want to Hear from You!

Share your Bee-Bot mats and ideas for new product features with us by filling out our Customer Contribution Form. Do you have images of students using Bee-Bots or Blue-Bots that you can send us? We'd love to feature them in a Bee-Bot Buzz or a Customer Story.

Terrapin | 955 Massachusetts Ave, Suite 365 | Cambridge, MA 02139

800-774-LOGO (5646) | +1-508-487-8181 (international) | Fax 617-302-9778

terrapinlogo.com | facebook.com/BeeBot.us | instagram.com/terrapin.tools.for.thinking

Find our Turtle Tuesdays Logo coding challenges on Facebook and Instagram each week!

Visit the Turtle Tuesdays web page to see all the challenges and solutions.

Some challenges also apply to Kinderlogo, Pro-Bot, and InO-Bot users.