The Robot Olympics have arrived!
The Miller’s Run crew was divided into 2 teams. They decorated their robots and were challenged to compete in 3 events: Dance competition, Obstacle Course, and Drag Race.
Week 6: Robot Decoration
For week 6 we got a little crazy with some mixed-media Lego decoration!
The LEAP Americorps crew had a wonderful workshop with Wonderarts and learned about the fun and educational value of incorporating are into, well…everything!
Who says robots can’t have some flair?!
Not these kids.
Rose: Oh the creativity!
Bud: Hopefully getting to decorate robots can make programming and tech stuff more accessible to kids who might not think they fit in to the “sciencey” scene.
Thorn: Lots of clean up.
Week 5: Using Color Sensors and Switch Blocks
This week was pretty exciting.
The Lego Mindstorm kits come with a color sensor. The sensor can detect different colors or changes in color, and can be programmed to do different tasks, using the switch block, using the imput from the sensor.
I made a maze using a thick black line and some different color swatches that the kids had to navigate.
Rose: The kids really liked using the sensors to detect different colors.
Bud: Will they someday work for Google designing self-driving cars? Maybe!
Thorn: Some of the sensors were a bit glitchy and did not work as well as expected.
Week 4: Driving in a Square With a Loop Block
This week the kids dove in to a bit of programming.
They were tasked with using a Loop Block to program their robots to drive in a square.
Rose: It was awesome to see the kids program the motors using rotations versus seconds and watching them get the hang of using the program pallet.
Bud: I can’t wait to see how they will use the loop block in future projects.
Thorn: The only thorn from this week was that most groups finished the task pretty quickly so they needed a tougher challenge!