Redmond Elementary fifth graders bring books to life with steam parade

On November 26, Redmond Elementary School’s fifth graders turned creativity and technology into a celebration for their youngest peers. For the second year in a row, the school hosted a Book Character Parade, a unique event where fifth graders designed and programmed robotic parade floats for an audience of excited kindergarten students. The event is inspired by the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which has been held for more than 100 years.

Under the guidance of librarian Heather Jones, students worked in groups to choose favorite book characters from the school library collection. But this wasn’t just about decorating, this was a full STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) activity. Students researched parade logistics, measured the Commons space, calculated distances and coded Blue-Bots to navigate the parade route. A Blue-Bot is a programmable floor robot for children that is designed to teach basic programming and computational thinking. Each group created one of 12 robotic floats representing beloved literary characters.

To make the experience even richer, students explored parade commentary traditions. Using Magic School AI for brainstorming, they wrote 50–80 word scripts about their characters and recorded audio commentary to play during the event. Groups even elected “voice talent” to narrate their floats as they rolled by. When the parade was over, the kindergarten students got the opportunity to ask the fifth graders questions about how the floats worked.

The result was a joyful, tech-powered parade that blended reading, math, engineering and creativity; all of which the kindergarten students enjoyed while being inspired to build their own floats in the future.