Imagine, if you will, a world where you have a device in your pocket that can access the total of human knowledge with a single tap. Well, this is the world we’re living in now. We adults swan about with our smartphones or laptops, blissfully used to the digital sorcery happening beneath our fingertips. But for kids with wide eyes open, they may wonder how all these work.
Picture little Timmy or Tammy, eyes bright with excitement, ready to peer into this world of zeroes and ones. Then BAM! They're hit with a tsunami of logical operators and binary systems. Suddenly, their dreams of becoming the next Steve Jobs or Ada Lovelace start to look about as achievable as a goldfish learning tap dance.
This isn't just a rare occurrence, but in fact a common hurdle in early STEM education, especially coding education. Children everywhere are grappling with these intangible ideas, trying hard to anchor them in their tangible world of toys and apple juice.
Cognitive Development Theory
You might wonder why children, those marvels of curiosity and imagination, struggle so hard with abstract coding concepts. The answer, it turns out, lies in the fascinating way their minds develop.
Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, dedicated his life to understanding how children's minds grow. His theory of cognitive development explains why our little Timmy and Tammy can name each one of their toys or fruits, but can't quite grasp what makes their tablets work. Piaget identified four stages of cognitive growth:
1. Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years): Learn the world through sensations and actions like listening and watching.
2. Preoperational stage (2-7 years): Learn to use language to depict the world, but still understand the world in a somehow literal way.
3. Concrete operational stage (7-11 years): Logic arrives. Start to think about things in an organized, but sometimes rigid way.
4. Formal operational stage (12+ years): Abstract thinking blooms, opening the door to complex concepts.
So for young kids, it's this mismatch between abstract coding logic and their cognitive readiness that often leads to frustration in early programming education. It's rather like expecting a toddler to grasp quantum physics—the hardware simply isn't ready for the software.
Innovative Coding Methods
To solve this problem, at WhalesBot, we've developed the makeU series robotics kit, a clever bridge between the abstract world of STEM or coding and the concrete realm of childhood. For kids aged 3-4, we provide magnetic coding blocks that have preset coding logic. When kids connect them together and press a button, their creation springs to life. For kids aged 5-6, we offer a magic pen and a bunch of coding cards. A few taps on the cards will make the robot they build move around as they like.
The market response has been an applause. KidsEdu Vietnam, a STEM education institution in Vietnam, has given glowing feedback. Ha Dau, the evangelist for preschool STEM education at KidsEdu Vietnam, noted that the makeU series helps kids aged 3-6 “understand the principles of coding quite quickly”. This helps spark curiosity and foster an understanding of coding that feels more like play than traditional education.
Ha Dau also emphasized the value of hands-on learning. With makeU, kids aren't just passive consumers of STEM knowledge; they become little engineers, builders of their own robotic dreams. The act of assembling their robots and seeing their commands come to life makes the learning process deeply engaging. “Our young students generally are highly engaged in class sessions with WhalesBot,” as Ha Dau put it.
Other Unexpected Effects
Moreover, the makeU series has proven to be a fantastic tool for promoting teamwork in kindergarten activities. Kids gather together with excitement, as they figure out how to make their robot work. When talking about the favorite parts about WhalesBot, Ha Dau mentioned how it made kids “work with each other in team”, highlighting how these tools bring out the best in teamwork and creativity.
When faced with challenges, the makeU series also teaches kids resilience and adaptability. As Ha Dau mentioned, kids “learn to make changes when the assembling or coding does not work as planned”, showing how kids learn to modify their approaches when their initial attempts don't work. This ability to pivot and persist is a vital skill, and it's wonderful to see it being cultivated from such a young age.
So far, WhalesBot’s makeU series has been used in 50% of KidsEdu STEM’s advanced curriculum. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step—or in this case, a single connection between blocks or a single tap onto a card. With the makeU series, that first step has never been more accessible or more exciting for young learners.
Now, you may find our little Timmy staring in concentration, connecting one last piece of magnet blocks. And across the room, you may find our little Tammy busy controlling her robot with a tap-tap-tap of her coding pen. The world of zeros and ones is no longer a maze, but a playground where young minds dance on the cusp of digital mastery. Their laughter echoes through the corridors of tomorrow's innovations.
