Dino Buddy KIBO Curriculum

Contributed by: Marlene Gabriela Marques Fernandes, Jardim de infância de Arcozelo das Maias, Portugal, https://www.facebook.com/marlene.g.fernandes.1/

Using robotics as a learning facilitator, children will learn the correlation between dinosuars with their environment, natural phenomena and their effects. They will learn how they lived on our planet millions of years ago.

This cross cirrcicular lesson plan includes:

Lesson 1: Sturdy building
Connection: Characteristics of dinosaurs
See the movie about the “Birth of the Earth” which provides information about the appearance, life and extinction of dinosaurs. Children will follow the steps of the engineering design process and draw the dinosaur they liked best and build it with Legos.

Lesson 2: What is a robot?
Connection: Reinforce characteristics of dinosaurs, compare and contrast groups of them
Remember the different types of dinosaurs according to the environment in which they move: air, earth or water. Discover the various types of robots they know and their functions.

Lesson 3: What is a program?
Connection: How do dinosaurs move? What are the physical characteristics of them?
Through creative and collaborative writing build a story of dinosaurs with which children identify themselves. Using apps will reproduce the steps that the main character will make during the story. Dramatize part of the story by programming the robot with simple commands.

Lesson 4: What are repeats?
Connection: Dinosaurs
Discovering more dinosaur characteristics and continuing the collaborative story.

Lesson 5: What are sensors?
Connection: How did the dinosaurs sense their friends and enemies? What senses did they have? Compare human and animal senses.
Discover how the dinosaurs knew friends and enemies. Remember the organs of the senses and compare them to the result of the research. Program the robot according to pre-established criteria, to react differently depending on the dinosaurs it finds.

Lesson 6: What are ifs?
Connection: Animal relationships
The dinosaurs are reptilian and therefore are oviparous. The children will participate in an egg hunt, whose purpose is to discover, through the reactions of “DinoKIBO” and the criteria previously defined, to whom the egg belongs.

Lesson 7: Final project
Connection: Visit to the natural museum of Lourinhã Dino Park
The kids will go to the natural museum where they can learn more about dinosaur activities, such as watching fossil cleaning in the laboratory, and seeing time charts of the evolution of dinosaurs.