Students work in a group to program a Bee-Bot while in their summer school class at Goliad Elementary School in Odessa, Texas. Jacob Ford/Odessa American via AP
Because much of the existing research on the benefits of coding on children’s development were focused on elementary-age kids, Eastern Connecticut State University professor Sudha Swaminathan decided to look into how coding impacts younger children’s development.
The small pilot study was structured as a pre- and post-assessment with coding activities as intervention. Six 4- and 5-year-olds who attend the university’s Center for Early Childhood Education played with a Bee-Bot, a robotic toy shaped like a bumblebee with forward, backward, left, and right arrow buttons, as well as “go” and “clear” buttons, on its back.