Terrapin is proud to announce the availability of Kinderlogo, making the rich Logo environment available to young learners. Single keystroke commands offer easy access to the Logo turtle which draws young learners into Logo's mathematical world. Kinderlogo engages children with shapes, colors, and sounds while giving them control over their explorations, encouraging them to stretch and develop their skills.

Kinderlogo provides 24 age-appropriate activities organized in five levels of difficulty. Activities are aimed at ability levels that include non-readers as well as children with beginning reading and writing skills. Kinderlogo may be used successfully with children as young as four while its open-ended nature keeps them challenged and engaged for years. Kinderlogo also works well with special needs students of any age.

Kinderlogo includes a Win/Mac dual format CD and 132-page user manual with in-depth explanations of the activities and the concepts behind them. Author Dorothy Fitch drew on three decades of Logo and software development along with practical experience from her position as a primary school technology director to create Kinderlogo, an engaging extension of Logo that develops critical thinking skills in young learners while they are just having fun.

Combining a Bee-Bot robot with a Bee-Bot Alphabet Mat gave students at Piney Point Elementary School in Houston, TX a new and exciting way to practice their spelling. Technology Director Karen North arranged the Bee-Bot Spelling Bee in celebration of Computer Science Education Week. Students practiced their spelling on the computer with Focus on Bee-Bot software and then entered commands on an actual Bee-Bot to send it around the alphabet mat to spell their assigned word.

According to Mrs. North, using Bee-Bot was great practice in algorithmic thinking for the young students and "it was fascinating to see students develop their strategies." Bee-Bot added a whole new dimension to the usual rote practice of learning how to spell and students were eager for the next spelling bee-Bot!

Jared, a sixth grader, encountered Terrapin Logo in his class at Traverse Mountain Challenger School in Utah. According to Jared, "computer programming became my favorite subject" through that experience.

Jared enjoys writing Logo programs and has shared a number guessing game he created through the Project Ideas section on the Terrapin web site. Download the program, copy it into Terrapin Logo, and try your skill at seeing how fast you can guess the number that the computer has chosen. The number guessing game is an engaging use of Logo's interactive capabilities and illustrates random numbers, variables, conditionals, and lists. Jared continues to improve the project and is happy to receive suggestions.