Robots roamed the STEAM classroom at Mandalay Elementary School, as first graders used technology to simulate the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

At one station, students used Bee-Bots to simulate the parade through city. They attached the paper animal balloon floats they designed to the yellow and black and robots. Using the arrow keys, first graders programmed the Bee-Bots to move past a series of buildings that were made out of Tangram magnetic tiles. It was important that they coded the robots correctly to make it past all of the buildings and not crash into one. 

Students also had to program Ozobots to get from one point to another while moving through a maze of people and buildings. They had to lay out small tiles to create a path that the small circular robot could follow.

STEAM teacher Alexa Del Piano explained that the two stations were culminating activities that followed nearly two months of coding and computer programming lessons. During that time, students became familiar with the simple robots that respond to directional codes.