The Westmont Montessori Kindergarten class participated this year in the Hour of Code. They were led by Maria Fehling, a Westmont parent from the company Accenture who encourages their employees to volunteer at schools to teach computer coding. In the case of our Kindergarten class, they learned that computers have a special language that people called programmers use to tell the computers what to do. They discussed the kinds of computers around us and the children named quite a few items in their own houses that were programmed.
Next, the children participated in an activity in coding. Some of them were “programmers” and some of them were “computers”. They were told that the code they were going to use was arrows and the task that the computers were to accomplish was to build a structure using cups. The programmers then worked to write their code of arrows; an arrow pointing up meant to pick up a cup, an arrow pointing right or left meant to move the cup that many spaces on a grid, a circular arrow meant to turn the cup 180 degrees, and an arrow pointing down meant to put the cup down.
Once the children had a few practice runs all together, they split into groups and started their work. It was a great experience for them in collaboration, cooperation, and coding!
Thank you to Mrs. Fehling and Accenture for the opportunity to participate in this fantastic lesson!
