Magazine 2020

62 | Edition No. 23 | 2020 PRE-PRIMARY Tali Maltz Robotics in the pre-primary is exciting and multi-faceted. We begin by introducing the youngest learners to our Lego soft bricks. These brightly coloured soft bricks help children to develop thinking skills, problem solving and collaborative and imaginative engineering. They enhance visual perceptual skills, such as visual discrimination and foreground and background differentiation, physical skills and spatial awareness. They encourage learners to explore numeracy skills such as space, shape, and colour, sorting, matching and counting, while developing gross motor abilities, such as hand-eye coordination, shoulder strength and balance. By planning and discussing their ideas, vocabulary, listening and auditory processing skills are built upon, parallel to constructions. These amazing soft bricks are washable, flexible and durable, whilst simultaneously being made from foam, reducing noise levels for sensitive younger learners, should the de- signs topple over. In this manner it also develops grit and resilience. They are so practical and versatile that they can be used indoors and outdoors. Once our pre-primary learners progress to Grade R, they are in- troduced in class to their six bricks sets and Robotics kits during their Robotics lessons. They learn about terminology such as studs, surfaces, vertical and horizontal. Each learner is given their own set of six bricks in class which are used to develop motor skills, directionality, patterning, addition and sub- traction, visual perceptual skills, critical thinking, visual closure and communication skills amongst others, whilst using them individu- ally, in pairs and groups. In formal Robotics lessons, the learners are introduced to a more diverse range of building materials, including cogs, levers, axles and pulleys for more intricate design and engi- neering challenges. They develop their planning skills and learn to follow building instructions by listening and using template cards to create fun constructions such as boats and wind turbines. They are also introduced to early computational thinking using coding games and grids. During online learning, we continued to enhance problem solving skills, critical thinking and design and engineering skills by using small Lego to explore concepts such as symmetry, matching and position and orientation. Our learners were provided the opportunity to participate in online challenges, presented via iMovie, to follow instructions and create symmetrical butter- flies, creative dinosaurs, towers and to play matching and copy - ing games using their own Lego and Duplo at home. We look forward to exploring our wonderful and diverse range of resources and developing our building, designing, thinking, compu- tational coding and engineering skills even further next year. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY