Bee-Bots Keep on Dancing!
The December 2022 "Dancing Bee-Bots!" story in Bee-Bot Buzz inspired Suzy Kitchen, Education Director of the Roberson Museum & Science Center in Binghamton, NY, to share how her team got Bee-Bots dancing! Here's her story.
In our "Bee-Bots Can Dance" activity, students write code and input it into Bee-Bot. Then, when Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" music starts, a student pushes GO!
"Bee-Bots Can Dance" is a great way for K–1 students (and older kids, because they love Bee-Bot) to practice their early computer science and digital fluency skills as well as the early reading skill of left-to-right progression. They practiced printing an arrow for the input as well.
We used the "Bee-Bots Can Dance" in groups or individually. There are two different sheets for recording commands. The first one is for four students to each write a line of code and then input their commands into Bee-Bot. The second sheet is for an individual or pair of students to complete.
Students write a command with letters (Fd, Bk, Rt, Lt) or an arrow in each box on the sheet. When the boxes are filled, students enter the commands (push the buttons) on Bee-Bot and hover a finger over the GO button until the music starts.
The "dance moves" are spontaneous and random when younger students code, but become more formalized with older kids.
"Bee-Bots Can Dance" sheets were developed by Binghamton City School District Challenge Enrichment teachers.
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