The use of robotics technology in school is renowned for providing children with opportunities to interact and collaborate in various school subjects, which raise questions of how to design learning activities that include robot technology in education. In this paper we explore how a designerly approach can foster children’s perspective-taking while creatively collaborating in mixed analogue and digital learning environments including robots, creative material and classical fairytales. Based on a social semiotics analytical framework, the study draws from workshops carried out with third grade classes of Danish school children, aged 9–10 years old. Using video recordings and a thematic analysis, the unit of analysis focuses on the activities with a special interest on children’s interactions with robots, creative materials, classical fairytales and with each other. The results of this study imply that by using a designerly approach with robotics in programming activities, conditions were created for children to engage in interactions and reasoning with each other, where the mixed learning environment reinforced children’s abilities of perspective-taking. © 2023, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.