Introduce children to what programing/coding means and practice coding instructions with symbols.

As part of Computer Science Week, our school organized the Hour of Code for preschool classes. Some activities were conducted in the classroom, while others took place in the computer lab, allowing students to apply what they learned in the classroom.

• 40+ copies of cup stack pack laminated sheets (stack 1-5)

• Stacks

• Robotics friends symbols and instructions on the board

• Pencils, coloured pencils or crayons

• A5 White paper for children to work their code on it 

• Rubbers and sharpeners

• Plastic cups

Teaching (15 minutes):

Today we are going to learn about computers and make a robot move according to what we tell it to do.

Teacher asks some questions to start the discussion: 

• What are computers?

• Devices that help us perform many things around us.

• Where do we find computers?

• Everywhere around us.

• Traffic lights, spaceships, computer games (even those in tabs and iPad) are controlled by computer programs!

• Did you know that robots are actually computers?

• Have you used a computer before?

• Who knows how to use a computer?

• How does a computer understand you?

Teacher asks the class if anyone has seen a robot or touched one?

Do you think a robot can “hear” you speak or “understand” what you say? 

Collect their answers and sum it up with explaining that robots understand us but “Not in the same way that a person does.”

Robots operate off of “instructions”, specific sets of things that they have been Preprogrammed to do. In order to accomplish a task, a robot needs to have a series of instructions that it can run. 

This is called a Program.

And the person who rights those instructions is called a programmer.

For example, Miss Hayley will be our robot today. She cannot understand English or Arabic. We want her to move from one place to another, so we need to write a few instructions that she is able to understand.

Write the following instructions on the board with their corresponding images:

Step forward (Upwards arrow)

Step backward (downwards arrow)

Turn left (left arrow)

Turn right (right arrow)

Stop (circle with a line across)

Miss Hayley will the classroom.
The children will be the programmers today and must give instructions to Miss. Hayley the Robot to come back in the class and walk towards you. While they shout out the directions, draw the directions on the board.

Remind the children that they can use the above instruction as many times as they want the robot to do them, e.g. the teacher is to say: if you want the robot to move 3 steps forward, you should draw 3 upwards arrows.

Open the door to the Robot and ask the children to call in the robot by giving it the instructions and follow them.

The teacher follows the steps on the board as the robot goes through them.

If they made a mistake and the robot didn’t reach its destination, explain to the children that even the best computer programmers make mistakes in their programs and they don’t work at first.

They have to test it out several times to fix the problem, this is called debugging.

Let’s start again and try it one more time and get the robot to understand what she should do.

Implement (30 minutes):

Now its your time to become programmers and write your own programs for our robots.

we are going to learn how to make a group of instructions so that another robot can understand it and stack cups on top of each other.

We are going to work in teams, just like computer scientists do, but first we are going to do it all together then you will do it in your groups.

First start by drawing the directions on the board from the symbol key worksheet. 

Using the cup stack pack, do stack 1 together on the board, according to the directions.

Place your stack of cups on the table where everyone can see them. Ask the class

to instruct you on the first thing to do. The correct answer is “pick up cup”. When you pick up each cup, note that the cup should automatically rise above the highest cup already in the stack.

With your hand still in the air, ask for the next move. You may have to remind the class a time or two that one step forward is only half the width of a cup.

Once you’ve placed a single cup, transition back to the board challenge the class to help you write the symbols on the board so that you can “run the program” later. One possible solution looks like this: