Let it Snow, Let it Snow in Louisiana
It seldom snows in Louisiana, but that didn’t stop librarian Margaret Paris from using Bee-Bot to help students at Moss Bluff Elementary School in Lake Charles learn the sequence of building a snowman.
Margaret uses Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots to introduce coding, and as part of a recent “Hour of Code” event she set up various rotation stations. “One station required them to identify colors, another shapes. The Brown Bear Brown Bear station requires them to retell the story Brown Bear. They used Blue Bot and the TacTile Code Reader Tiles for this one. Another station featured the ABC Mat, which required the students to identify letters. The last station was the Bee-Bot race to Rapunzel’s tower. Two students constructed a tower using Legos, then they raced their Bee-Bots to the tower. This activity allowed the students to determine distance.”
Margaret uses a variety of sources to get accessories for her Bee-Bots, sometimes ordering mats directly from Terrapin, and other times finding resources at Teachers Pay Teachers; that is where she bought the Snowman Mat (from Della Larsen’s Class).
“During the “Hour of Code” event students drew a card containing the parts of a snowman. They had to navigate the Bee-Bot around the mat to the snowman part shown on the card. If they succeeded, they drew that part of the snowman on their paper. The object was to be the first player to draw a snowman.”
This exercise teaches sequencing and coding, as well as providing opportunities to practice fine motor skills, drawing, language, and more. And, perhaps best of all, it brought some winter time snowflake fun to an otherwise subtropical climate.
Contact Information
| Name | Margaret Paris |
| Position | Librarian |
| School | Moss Bluff Elementary School |
| Location | Lake Charles, LA |
| Address | 215 School Street, Lake Charles, LA 70611 |
| margaret.paris@cpsb.org | |
| Website | https://www.cpsb.org/mossbluffelementary |
| Tags | Bee-Bot, Blue-Bot, Lousiana, Seasons, Coding |
| Age | K-6 |