Yes, Your Kindergarten Student is Programming!

Note: This year I am blogging weekly reflections at my school site (weskids.com) in order to provide more transparency in my teaching for parents, students, and the community (local and global). I will be cross-posting most of the entries here at Bit By Bit as well. You can see the original posts at the “Reflections by Mr. S” blog.

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Over the past couple of weeks, Kindergarten classes have been using iPads in the Computer Lab. We first learned how to share them with a partner and how to operate them safely by playing a simple math game. Once routines were established, we moved on to learning how to PROGRAM.

Daisy_the_Dinosaur

 

daisy

Using an incredible, free iPad App—Daisy the Dinosaur—students learned the basics of programming. It is amazing to watch such young students approach problem solving without fear or hesitation, as well as witness what incredible readers they’ve become over the year (students had no trouble reading the commands to give Daisy, such as: jump, move, spin, turn, roll, etc). I showed the “bare essentials” of how to use the App, and then let students have a go. I gave them 2 challenges as well: see if they could program Daisy to go under the sun as well as have Daisy touch the sun. In order for students to do this, they had to figure out how to program numerous commands to get Daisy to cross the long field, and to give Daisy numerous “grow” commands until she was high enough to touch the sun. Some students figured out that they could also make Daisy “jump” to touch the sun!

 

The Challenge of
The Challenge of “Touching the Sun”

This week, we also learned how to set up “loops” to repeat commands, as well as “if, then” commands. An example of an “if, then” command would be: “If I shake the iPad, Daisy will SPIN.”

Daisy the Dinosaur is a free App that runs on the iPad: http://www.daisythedinosaur.com/.

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Things to do at home with your scholar:

  • Download Daisy the Dinosaur if you have an iPad!
  • Ask your student what his/her favorite part of programming with Daisy was.
  • Ask your student to describe how he/she solved the challenges.
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One Response to Yes, Your Kindergarten Student is Programming!

  1. I really enjoy your blog! I was blown away by this post. I couldn’t believe that students as young as Kindergarteners could really learn the basics of programming through a fun and exciting iPad game. I know I would have been all over this app if I had discovered it when I was that age. Thank you for all the information you share on this blog. It is very helpful to aspiring teachers like myself and my classmates!

    Bonnie Davidson
    UNE, Elementary Education Major

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