Renee

=Renee Ewert=

I teach Kindergarten in the Renwick #267 District at Andale. I have two half day sessions and will have approximately 13 students in each session. I am looking forward to introducing Bee-Bot to my students. Kindergartners are excited about everything and I am sure they will learn so much from Bee-Bot in such a fun way!

__Journal Entries__
August 30: Things have been very hectic in my Kindergarten world! The Bee-Bots came to visit us on Friday, August 24. We have 15 high schoolers who come to help us every Friday. ALL the students were "buzzing" with excitement! It was hard to tell who was having more fun, the kindergartners or the seniors!! We did a lot of exploring with our Bee-Bots and discovered that is wasn't easy sometimes to get Bee-Bot to go where we wanted him to. We will do more experimenting next week.

September 5: Today I introduced Bee-Bot to my fellow teachers at a faculty meeting. They were eager to learn more about Bee-Bot and we practiced with a few moves. I have already had two coworkers ask to borrow them, a third grade classroom teacher and our resource room teacher. I will let you know what they think of Bee-Bot.

September 10: Last week, we weren't able to play with Bee-Bot. We had DIBELS testing and have finally finished all the ones who were gone. This Friday, we will be having Bee-Bot come and play. The high schoolers will be coming back to our room and we are going to work with five different stations. We are going to find our classmates' pictures to learn everyone's names, find the numbers 0-10, find and name letters of the alphabet, find and name shapes, and find and name colors using the grid system. (I plan on making more grids out of clear shower curtains.) I'm sure the time will go by quickly and they will all want to do more! I will let you know how it went next week. I am also attaching some photos of our first Bee-Bot visit.

September 18: On Friday, the high schoolers came to our class and helped us with our Bee-Bot stations. We really put Bee-Bot through the paces. We split into five groups and rotated to each station. One station was the road way. Several of our Bee-Bot drivers crashed or sent Bee-Bot into the water! (We have a blue carpet they determined was the water hazard!) Our second station mission was to find a shape the high schoolers named. The third station goal was to find letters of the alphabet that were chosen. The fourth station was to learn our classmates' names and the fifth station had us finding a number that was chosen. As all the students progressed to the next station, I could see a lot of interactions with everyone as they worked together to figure out a path to get to the correct grid space. With practice, the students learned they did not have to count the grid that Bee-Bot started on.

I have inserted some pictures of the grids. I made the grids out of vinyl purchased at Wal-Mart for $1.97 a yard. I purchased 2 yards and I was able to make a 28 square grid, a 20 square grid, and an additional 16 square grid and I still have a little bit left over. I thought about making a number line out of it. I used a permanent marker to draw the grid lines and taped the cards to the underside. I am storing them flat in a cabinet.

September 25: This week, our Bee-Bots went on a road trip. The third grade classrooms used Bee-Bot to practice their science vocabulary. Working with partners, the third graders used Bee-Bot to match the vocabulary word to the definition. The teachers created cards to place under the mat and the partners had to work together to program Bee-Bot to review the science vocabulary. The teachers told me the kiddos were really engaged in their learning and had a fun time practicing skills that are not always "fun" to learn.

October 6: We have not had a lot of time to work with Bee-Bot the last two weeks due to conferences and professional development days. In the coming week, I am going to use Bee-Bot in centers to practice letter names and sounds and number recognition 0-10. I am sure it will be a fun week for everyone!

October 18: This week, we have been using Bee-Bot during Intervention Time and Work Stations. We have implemented the 3 Tier Reading Model in our district this year and we call that our Intervention Time. I have a seventh grader and a para who come Monday through Thursday for 30 minutes. We have three small groups that rotate to the three of us to work on early literacy skills. My para uses Bee-Bot as a fun way to identify the sight words that have been introduced. The middle school helper uses Bee-Bot to practice letter recognition. Both work stations are a huge hit! We also had inside recess due to the weather this week and several students asked to play with Bee-Bot! They are becoming much more effecient with their skills and really look forward to programming Bee-Bot.

Diane and I presented Bee-Bot to the Board at their Oct. Board Meeting. The meeting was held at St. Marks (Diane's school) so we shared her students. Bee-Bot and the students were a HUGE hit!! All of the board members and attendees gathered close to see the students in action with Bee-Bot. Everyone was impressed with the kindergartners knowledge and skills they demonstrated as they worked on each activity. One board member even said "I wish they would have had Bee-Bot when I was a kid!".