Brown Bear, Brown Bear Algorithm Activity and Printable

April 18, 2016 By Deirdre

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is the perfect book for building a coding algorithm. It asks over and over again what is being seen. On the Brown Bear, Brown Bear Algorithm Activity children will draw arrow from the brown bear to first thing that he sees. After drawing arrow north connecting the brown bear to the red bird, children will need to decide which direction they need to go to get to the yellow duck. Will they need to go just one direction or a combination of directions to get from the bear to character at the end of the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?

There really isn’t just one series of steps that needs to be used to get from one animal to another. There are definitely shorter routes and longer routes. When you are building an algorithm, you want create the shortest number of steps between one thing and the next. When I am building paper algorithms with my students, we try to do the same thing.

While I advocate that they just use one direction per box and try not to place a direction in the animal box on this Brown Bear, Brown Bear printable, it doesn’t always happen. Some try to come with complex algorithms that have lots of directions. I unusually take the time to tell my student that computer coders or programmers try to make their algorithms simple. Too many steps or a complicate series of steps can lead to trouble.

The ultimate goal is to give my students an understanding of coding even when they are in kindergarten or first grade. My older students are learning to code using Code.org. Next year my first graders will be using it too.

Plant Growth Algorithm Coding Worksheet

March 28, 2016 By Deirdre

A few weeks ago I shared a few algorithm building coding activities. Two of the activities were based on the books. The first one was We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and the second was based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Recently I made another coding building or sequencing activity based on the growth of a bean plant. This activity isn’t based on any particular book. I will share with you at the end of this post a collection of really wonderful plant related fiction and non-fiction books.

We start out with bean plants as seeds at our house. The plant growth algorithm worksheet does too. Starting at the packet of seeds children will draw arrows to show the direction we need to go to follow the bean seeds growth.

Example: You will need to head up or north to get to the seed out of the seed packet. You would draw up arrows in each box that leads you up to the seed. (If you like you can say north, instead of up.)

Once you reach the seed, you need to decide what directions you will need to go to reach the seed growing a tiny root. There is more than one way to get to each step in the plant growth sequence. Below you will find the route we took to get from the seed packet to the full grown plant.

The goal of this activity isn’t to find the perfect route. The goal is to try to build an algorithm. Working with algorithms using things that children know like plant growth helps them begin to understand coding. It also allows them to work on direction and positional words.

Here are some wonderful books on plant growth we have read and I think you will like. Some are fiction books while others are non-fiction.

Planting a Rainbow

Pick, Pull, Snap!: Where Once a Flower Bloomed

From Seed to Plant

Jack’s Garden

The Tiny Seed: Book & CD (The World of Eric Carle)

Flower Garden

Coding Activity- We’re Going on a Bear Hunt Algorithm

February 21, 2016 By Deirdre

Learning to code isn’t something that you have to wait for your children to get older to do. I have been working on coding with my kindergarten and first-grade students. We started by exploring what an algorithm is. They were told an algorithm is the series of steps needed to complete a task. There have been several activities we have used to learn about algorithms. I shared the walking and building an algorithm coding activity with you last week. This week I want to share with you the Going on a Bear Hunt algorithm coding lesson we did just a short time ago.

Coding Activity

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We started by reading the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. The kids loved the rhythm and repetition found in this book. Many had learned hand signs to going with each area the family encountered in the book. After coming to a consensus as to which hand signs we would use, I reread the book while they make the signs.

After we had read the book twice, I passed out a We’re Going on a Bear Hunt that I had made. We talked about how we were going to create an algorithm on the grid that followed the events of the story.

We started at the house of the family in the book. Then I asked a student to share with me if we needed to go up, down, left or right to get to the field. When we had decided that we needed to go up, we talked about how many squares we needed to go up. They drew an arrow in the square between the house and the field.

From the field box we talked about the direction we needed to go to get to the stream. After deciding to go up, they drew arrows in the squares between the field and the stream. We continue creating an algorithm that would ultimately lead us all the way to the bear.

As you probably noticed in the pictures above, JDaniel worked on this activity at home with me too. He does a great job of letting me know if an activity works and if it is fun before I try it with my students at school.