Wantagh’s young innovators stage robot parade

Inspired by a world-famous parade, first graders at Wantagh Elementary School combined their creativity with their growing knowledge of robotics for a special event.

Students held their own robot parade, which featured hand-drawn floats. STEAM teacher Kaitlin Humphrey showed students a video on how floats for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade are made. Then, they were tasked with developing their own ideas for floats. Their artwork was cut out and taped to wooden sticks, which were then attached to Ozobots.

Before the parade began, students used Magna-Tiles to make buildings beside the parade route. Ozobots are programmed to respond to different colors, so students placed the small robots on a black line and watched them circle around the table and past their buildings.

Through their use of Ozobots, first graders have been learning about different concepts such as algorithms, input and sequencing. All grades at Wantagh Elementary School recently explored coding and robotics, using tools such as Bee-Bots, Bits Box, Dash robots and Code.org programming activities.