WALTHAM, Mass. - s4story -- KinderLab Robotics, creator of the award-winning KIBO robot, today announced the expansion of its curriculum offerings to serve students in grades 3-5 with Exploring with KIBO. Building on KIBO's proven success in early childhood education, KinderLab's playful, screen-free robotics kits now offer a seamless learning progression that spans PreK-5th grade.

The new curriculum includes 60 hours of standards-aligned lessons and activities specifically designed for upper elementary grades, with 20 hours of instruction per grade level. Serving as a direct follow-on to the Growing with KIBO K-2 curriculum, Exploring with KIBO allows older children to expand their computational thinking and computer science skills utilizing KIBO's playful extension sets and engaging cross-curricular activities.

This new curriculum allows district leaders to extend their existing KIBO implementations with age-appropriate, challenging content that maintains the platform's signature screen-free, hands-on learning approach. The expanded curriculum features:

• 60 hours of comprehensive upper elementary computer science instruction;
• Standards-aligned, hands-on lessons and activities to support cross-curricular integration with math, science, social studies, and English Language Arts to build computational thinking and computer science skills; and
• Clear lesson plans with background information, vocabulary, and scripting to support all teachers, whether they are classroom teachers or trained CS specialists

Exploring with KIBO leverages KinderLab's extension sets to provide variety, engagement, and excitement for students as they work with KIBO for three additional years. The expanded curriculum enhances the KIBO STEAM Explorer Classroom package by incorporating advanced programming capabilities through the Building Brick Extension Set, Marker Extension Set, Free Throw Extension Set, and the Advanced Coding Extension Set.

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"We are proud to now offer more than 200 hours of curriculum to our customers. Paired with our existing award-winning PreK–2 curriculum, Exploring with KIBO delivers a seamless progression from foundational skills to complex concepts," said Jason Innes, KinderLab's director of curriculum, training, and product management. "Although KIBO was originally designed to meet the developmental needs of pre-K–2 students, we've heard over and over again from many upper elementary teachers that older kids benefit from KIBO as well. We created Exploring with KIBO to support those teachers and students. Broadening our curriculum also allows a wider range of students to benefit from their school's investment in KIBO, while educators have the comfort of working with a familiar robot."

Sample lessons offered in the new curriculum include:

• Historical Journeys, a 3rd-grade lesson aligned with social studies: Students draw a floor map and then program KIBO to participate in historical events and use KIBO's Marker Extension Set to trace a journey on the map.
• Mark and Measure, a 4th-grade lesson aligned with NGSS standards related to speed calculation and energy transfer: Using KIBO's Free Throw Extension Set, students program KIBO to throw a ping pong ball and then measure both distance and time to calculate the ground speed of the ball.
• KIBO Race Course, a 5th-grade lesson aligned with Common Core math standards on representing data: Using the Advanced Coding Extension Set, students record the behavior of their KIBOs and analyze data to explore the concept of random numbers.

Exploring with KIBO is available for pre-order on the KinderLab webstore for shipment in February 2025. Educators will have the chance to preview KinderLab's new curriculum in person at the 2025 Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) Conference, taking place January 14-17, 2025. Demonstrations at Booth #942 will highlight how KIBO grows with upper elementary students, supporting cross-curricular learning from mathematical problem-solving to scientific investigations and literacy connections.

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For more information about KIBO's expanded curriculum for grades 3-5, visit KinderLab's Exploring with KIBO page.

About KinderLab Robotics
KinderLab is the creator of the award-winning KIBO, the screen-free robot designed for young learners in pre-K-5th grade. Grounded in more than 20 years of early childhood development research, KIBO empowers children to build, code, decorate, and bring their robot to life.

KIBO has proven efficacy in helping kids learn STEAM through hands-on exploration, honing their computational skills while encouraging creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration. Developed by Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers from Boston College, KIBO is currently in 70+ countries to help kids in pre-K through 5th grade learn STEAM—and get excited about it!

KinderLab offers curriculum to integrate STEAM elements into a wide range of curricula, including art, cultural studies, and reading literacy. For more information, visit KinderLabRobotics.com.