On February 24th, the third CODING meeting took place, focusing on designing coding experiences in nurseries and preschools. Guided reflection and peer exchange supported participants in moving from practice to intentional educational design.
FROM EXPERIENCE TO DESIGN
The session opened with a rich sharing of teaching practices centered on connecting computational thinking and creative coding developed within the body and movements, images, sounds and colors. Teachers explored how coding can emerge from embodied and sensory experiences. Through unplugged activities based on silence, sound and rhythm, children were introduced to the concepts of sequence and code. These explorations gradually evolved into plugged experiences, where robots transformed rhythms and body movements into technological actions, making the connection between body, sound and digital tools tangible and meaningful.
Projects such as “Little Robot”, the exploration of geometric forms inspired by the territory, and “Pepe’s Story” highlighted how coding fosters brainstorming, collaboration, problem solving and progressive learning. From mapping children’s prior knowledge to experimenting through grids, storytelling and robot missions, each pathway emphasized that robots do what we program them to do — empowering children to see themselves as active creators.
DESIGNING IN NURSERIES AND PRESCHOOL
The main topic of the third meeting was the concept of design for learning, reflecting on instructional design as a flexible, participatory and transformative process that moves from implicit practice to explicit planning, while remaining responsive to children’s experience. Through the conversational framework and the EAS phases (preparatory, operational and restructuring), participants examined how meaningful, situated and collaborative learning can be intentionally designed, moving from the implicit to the explicit while remaining dynamic and responsive. Particular attention was given to meaningful and situated learning, where children connect new knowledge to prior experiences and construct understanding through doing, reflecting and interacting with peers and teachers.
THE DESIGN SHEET
Through the “design sheet” partecipante learned how to develop micro-design proposals aligned with cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional and creative goals. Creativity was explored as variation, experimentation and integration, blending embodied, symbolic and digital experiences.
Working through the preparatory, operational and restructuring phases, teachers reflected on different educational logics of creativity: as variation, starting from familiar patterns and routines; as experimentation, where error becomes a resource and learning happens through doing; and as integration, connecting embodied, symbolic and digital experience through reflection and meaning making.
This third meeting strengthened the shared vision of coding as an educational approach that nurtures active, reflective and collaborative learners, capable of constructing meaning through experience and design.
Coding emerged once again not only as a digital competence but also as a way of structuring thinking through action, experimentation and collaboration.
Coding&CO-DoING is a KA210 project co-funded by Anefore through the Erasmus+ Programme. It is coordinated by KEHSIA asbl (LU), together with FISM Provinciale di Parma – Federazione Italiana Scuole Materne, Provincia di Parma (IT).