Programming has recently been included in the standard Swedish curriculum for preschool and compulsory school. This design project is aimed at introducing preschool children to some aspects of computational thinking. In particular, we focus on teaching the “and” logical expression.
After initial field research at a preschool, a prototype concept was devised. With an ocean setting, children could experiment with different logical states by placing boats on the screen and observing the animated outcome. For example, placing a boat in one corner will cause a jellyfish to appear, while placing a second boat in another corner might make a turtle to appear instead.
In testing sessions with children, it was found that simple, single-token logical expressions could be understood by participants. Compound logical expressions requiring multiple tokens were not readily understood.
