KinderLab Introduces KIBO Robotics Course for the Youngest Homeschoolers
The rental program includes a robot kit and detailed curriculum for homeschools to introduce STEM education through creative coding, arts, and imaginative play
(Waltham, MA) October 29, 2019 – KinderLab Robotics today announced a new three-month KIBO Home Robotics Course that enables home educators and caregivers to introduce coding and robotics to their young learners without computers or screen time. The course provides a step-by-step curriculum to easily teach coding, robotics, and STEAM concepts, and includes use of a KIBO 18 Robot Kit to support the curriculum. This unique rental program makes creative, cross-curricular STEM/STEAM learning affordable and easy to implement for homeschool educators.
KIBO is a hands-on, playful robot that offers young children a fun way to learn coding and building along with storytelling and imaginative play. KIBO is entirely unplugged and screen-free: no smartphone, tablet, PC, or network connection is needed. Children use wooden blocks to program their own robot, then build onto the robot with art and craft materials to create a character to act out their story or lesson.
KIBO is the result of extensive research by KinderLab co-founder Dr. Marina Bers, Chair of the Eliot-Pearson School of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. Dr. Bers has shown that children engage with powerful ideas in computational thinking, the engineering design process, and social-emotional learning (SEL) by imagining and creating with technological tools. Dr. Bers’ research demonstrates that when children create and express themselves with age appropriate technologies, they develop not just technical skills but also confidence, perseverance, and creativity.
Jason Innes, the manager of training and curriculum development at KinderLab Robotics, Inc., said, “As the first educational robotics company to offer a program specifically designed for home educators, our goal is for KIBO to help level the playing field and offer homeschoolers the same opportunities their peers have in public schools. Adding coding, robotics, and STEAM to a homeschool curriculum can feel difficult—and expensive. We’re offering the KIBO Home Robotics Course as a rental program to create an affordable, step-by-step, supportive way to include KIBO in home learning environments.”
The KIBO Home Robotics Course integrates arts and crafts into STEAM learning. As children develop their computational thinking and coding skills with KIBO, they can use their robot to tell stories, choreograph dances, create a vehicle to explore a cardboard town, create programs that model the behavior of animals in their habitats, and more. Coding becomes a new literacy that children can use to explore their other subjects more deeply.
With the three-month KIBO Home Robotics Course, home educators have full support from KinderLab Robotics as they integrate coding and robotics into their homeschool curriculum. In addition to the complete, research-backed Creating with KIBO curriculum, the program includes fun Activity Cards, helpful workbooks, and a clear lesson sequence. Course participants also receive weekly emails with specific advice, examples, and suggestions keyed to their progress through the course.
The KIBO Home Robotics Course is available now at KinderLabRobotics.com/at-home. The program fee of $169 includes the three-month KIBO rental, complete curriculum, and two-way shipping anywhere in the continental United States (additional shipping charges apply for US locations outside the continental US).
When participants complete the three-month course, they can use the pre-paid shipping label to return the course materials to KinderLab. Families who would like to continue using KIBO to support STEAM learning in the home can instead choose to purchase their KIBO Robot Kit at a significant discount. After purchasing, they can extend their KIBO experience with a range of fun add-ons and extension sets.
About KIBO – The Playful STEAM Robot
KIBO is a robot kit that allows children aged 4–7 to build, program, decorate, and bring their own robot to life without requiring any screen time on a smartphone, tablet, or computer. It is an open platform on which students can envision and create their own robot. With art and engineering, students transform KIBO into imagined animals, vehicles, storybook characters, and more. Students plan a coding sequence using wooden programming blocks, then scan their sequence with the built-in barcode scanner, press its button—and the robot comes alive.
When children build, code, and decorate their own robot, they perceive it as play, but they are learning invaluable STEAM skills. Not only are these hands-on experiences inherently rewarding, but they help children understand the technology in their world and can even improve their future job prospects.
About KinderLab Robotics
KinderLab Robotics is the creator of the award-winning KIBO, a playful educational STEAM robot kit based on 20 years of child development research with thousands of children, teachers, and parents. Developed specifically for teachers by Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers at Tufts University, KIBO is currently used in 59 countries and has proven efficacy in helping kids learn STEAM—and getting them excited about it! KinderLab offers a complete suite of teaching materials that help integrate STEAM elements into a wide range of curricula, including art, cultural studies, and reading literacy.
For more information, please visit KinderLabRobotics.com.
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