Me, and Bee-Bot, on the Map
At J. F. Baugher Elementary School in Milton, PA, Kristin Barr describes herself as “a veteran kindergarten teacher, mom of 2, Keystone Technology Innovator, and a STEAM enthusiast!” She has been using Bee-Bot in her classroom for some time, teaching directionality, pre-reading skills, coding and so much more! “Bee-Bot also helped us explore CVC words, using the CVC Bee-Bot mat. Some of the activities included: segmenting the sounds in a 3-phoneme word and writing the words that Bee-Bot landed on.”
As Kristin says “The beginning
stage of primary coding starts with coding your own body!” She uses the
story, “Bug Dance” by Stuart J. Murphy, about a group of bugs following
directions to learn a silly dance. After listening to story, the
children recreate the dance themselves and then they work in small
groups to code Bee-Bot to dance, too. She says that this helps students
develop skills such as “identifying positional words and cause and
effect. Students will also develop critical thinking skills, sequencing,
counting skills, planning, left-to-right reading, and problem solving as
they navigate their Bee-Bot.”
Kristin has also used Bee-Bot to teach map skills during her “Me on the Map” kindergarten social studies unit. At that age children are beginning to understand the concept of their community, and their place within it. They see themselves as the center but gradually learn that they are in their house, which is in a neighborhood, which is in a town, and so on. This starts by talking about, and visually seeing, how to get from A to B, whether that be from their cubby to the door of their classroom, or from the local grocery store to the post office.
During this time there is much opportunity for discussions of distance, directionality, location, and community, and lessons often incorporate basic maps of the students’ own surroundings, which demonstrate locations in a clear and simple way. Kristin got creative with a Bee-Bot, a Card Mat, and some simple images of buildings in their town. “Using the clear Bee-Bot Card Mat, the relative location of our town library, gas station, school, park, and police station were explored.”
“Bee-Bot traveled all around Milton, Pennsylvania!”
Contact Information
| Name | Kristin Barr |
| Position | Keystone Technology Innovator and Kindergarten Teacher |
| School | Baugher Elementary School |
| Location | Milton, PA |
| Address | 60 Brenda Rovenolt Dr, Milton, PA 17847 |
| Website | https://www.milton.k12.pa.us/schools/baugher-elementary/ |
| Tags | Bee-Bot, Learning Mats, Pennsylvania, Kindergarten, STEM/STEAM |
| Age | Kindergarten |