These K1 kids are getting ready for school to start in a few short weeks. We've all mastered writing our name and some amazing things were happening in journals today. Many kids took the lesson last week to heart and were able to draw a picture and label it in their journals. I am so proud of them!
We did a lot of math today. We practiced counting to 100 and learned about the greater than and less than sign. We talked about how it's a greedy alligator who wants to eat the most cookies possible. We did a cut and paste activity and it really shows how solid of a number sense your child has - check their work in your backpack. If it's not that great there is work to be done on the numbers 0-10.
The biggest lesson in reading today was b vs d. That's a tricky one. We made beds from our hands to be able to check if a printed letter is a b or a d. Reference the picture in order to practice at home.
Today was the last day of our Summer Robotics 4 camp. We built the EdPrinter and boy was it a challenge! There were 4 kids in the class that were able to do it mostly independently. Once they were done they were able to assist me in helping everyone else get the build completed. The instructions were challenging and it was confusing about how to put the pieces together.
Once we got it built we had a discussion about the coding software Python and I showed the group the 2.5 pages of code written for the robot to draw a rectangle. Of course, a lot of the code is notes about how it works and not actually code, but it made a good point about how we've been using a drag and drop coding program and there is a lot of code behind those drag-able squares. I gave the four older kids the option of playing with the Python code to have Edison draw a different design, but by then their brains were shot and they opted for just free building :). I hope to have the speed video and class video up soon (as well as more pictures) but it seems I'm having technology glitches that I don't have time to solve this evening. I'll aim to fix it all this weekend! Thanks for learning with me!
As the builds get harder our class endurance, grit, and problem solving all have stepped up to the challenge.
When everyone was done building we experimented with different magnetic toys to determine how much weight the crane could hold and what made it tip over. I encouraged the kids to explore adding pieces or changing the design of the crane to be able to hold more weight.
Here is the speed build and a couple videos from our class time together:
In K1 camp this morning we played around with drawing a picture and labeling it with one group, and drawing a picture and writing sentences to describe it in another group.
We also played with coins and read a few books about each one. We learned the fun rhyme:
Penny, Penny, easily spent.
Copper brown and worth one cent.
After a little head shoulders knees and toes we did a speed art activity that we'll finish up next week to inspire them through the year ahead.
This afternoon was the best camp day yet! We all successfully built the Ed Robo Claw. We had fun driving our robo claws with the remote control. The kids set up their own game where they had to pick up pieces and deliver them to either the recycling center or the garbage dump.
Then we started a new programming challenge. Using EdBlocks we attempted to program our Robot Claw to deliver a container of toxic waste to a secure location and return back to camp.
We got really close to being successful with many different groups but had to cut time short in order to clean up successfully. Since we now know we can clean up successfully we can have a little more time working out our code challenge tomorrow. Here is a speed build of the Robo Claw and some class videos. Try, try again is certainly the motto of robotics! I encourage you to try again at home and see if you can figure out the code.
This afternoon Robotics 4 jumped right into the EdDigger build. We found it was easier the second day even though the build was labeled as just as hard as the first day's build.
Everyone was successful in building the EdDigger before snack and recess time. After recess we talked about different coding options and then left it open to each kid to play with their EdDigger, rebuild the EdTank, create their own creation, and/or work on coding their builds with EdBlocks.
At the end of the day I asked everyone to sort their bag of Lego compatible bricks and it was surprisingly difficult for many kids. Please, please work with your children at home to follow the back of the package and count the bricks to get the appropriate bricks in the bag. It's an important organizational skill.
Here is the speed build of the EdDigger with a few videos from our class today:
Today in K1 prep we used our math lesson to facilitate our writing lesson. It's a math heavy week with concepts including patterning, graphing, and money/coins. We started our writing and math lesson together by drawing patterns of color in our journals. We then stretched the color names and wrote them down.
We then moved into graphing. I love to introduce graphing using the book "Ten Apples Up On Top!" or "Hats for Sale". Both books show stacking multiple items (apples or hats) on top of a head. I introduce graphing vertically first and draw a smiling face on the identifying picture. We talk about how the face has to wear all the matching hats. The hat can't be up high with empty space between it and the identifying picture because if I put my hat way up high it would just fall to the ground. We use the SmartBoard to manipulate a handful of graphs and then turn to horizontal graphs. The concept makes a lot of sense to young kids. They proved that they understood it by cutting and gluing their own practice graph.
Everyone is doing fantastic with their reading. I'm impressed with all the skills that are being practiced. We're getting better at identifying letter names and sounds, we're gaining fluency with word families and sight words, and we're exploring reading books that are just right for our reading levels.
At the end of the day we sang the ABCD Nursery Rhymes song, jumped while we counted to 100, and then worked on building patterns with unifix cubes. Each child is borrowing 10 unifix cubes to build AB patterns at home.
Robotics 4 is a week long camp where we learn to use two Edison robots together and connect them with Lego compatible bricks and gears. Today we worked through how to program Edison to respond to a remote control and then built the EdTank.
Here is a quick build of the EdTank and a few short videos of our group playing with it at the end.
The pieces are more difficult to use than Lego brand pieces so there were definitely frustrating moments today. I was impressed with how students worked through challenges and helped each other.
When students finished the build they were able to play with the EdTank and the remote control. Then they were issued a programming challenge. Their EdTank is a fire engine and the rubber band it shoots is a water bomb to put out a fire. We drew a "Base Camp" and used EdBlocks to try and write a program where Edison could drive to the fire, shoot the water bomb, and then drive back to camp. Have your student try this at home. Draw the "map" on a large piece of paper or cardboard and work through the EdBlocks code to find a solution. It will take two different programs for the two robots to talk together and work in unison. If your child creates a solution please share it with me! I'd love to see pictures and/or video!
This week we pushed EdBlocks to the max and learned to code some amazing activities with Edison in Robotics 3. Today we started off with music. After a lesson about the length of different notes (whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes) and how to select a different note from the staff I sent the kids off to code Hot Cross Buns, Happy Birthday, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. With this set of songs kids were able to be challenged with the code at the appropriate level for themselves.
Everyone was thrilled when they coded their robot with a new song. I have what feels like hours of robotic sounding tunes in my phone videos now. :).
After coding the music we learned how to make Edison perform like a real performer on a stage. We talked about how at a theater they turn off the lights for the audience, open the curtains, then turn on a spotlight. The kids then programmed Edison with a wait block so he would perform when the spotlight turned on.
We used our knowledge about Edison's light sensor to play the Cockroach Game. Each child programmed their Edison to avoid the light. We put 3-4 Edisons in a circle and gave everyone a flashlight. The goal was to get the other Edison bots to go out of the circle and the last one in the circle was the winner.
After playing for a bit we introduced the motor speed block and made predictions about if we set the speed to slow or fast which would help Edison win the game. We adjusted our code however each child saw fit and played again.
At the end of the day we had a dance party where the teacher robot sent out a signal or message to all the other robots that told them to start dancing. This required students to program Edison to wait until the signal was received and then dance however each student decided was best. We had a complete blast exploring these different programming abilities with Edison. Thanks for spending part of your summer with me! I look forward to one more amazing week of Robotics Summer camp - next week we're adding Lego type bricks to Edison and creating some amazing robotic builds. There is one spot left for next week if you haven't signed up yet, just let me know!
It was game day in kindergarten and first grade prep. We're half way through our time together and it was time to spice things up. After writing our names and jumping on the tramp we explored a few sections of Starfall.com We worked on individual letters, CVC words, and reading bigger books.
We then split and worked on word families with half of the group and the other half worked on reading on their personal reading level.
Our math game today was "Guess My Secret Rule" and just like I promised I pulled out the silverware drawer. We started our game outside but then had to have a heart-to-heart about staying focused (it's really much harder outside) so we moved inside in order to complete our game.
I put out three items with a matching attribute and a fourth item that doesn't match. After playing with the silverware for a while we moved on to using the attribute blocks which are super convenient for this game.
Instead of writing individually in our journals today we wrote as a group. We talked about how we can put words on the paper by stretching the sounds we hear to isolate the letters and then write one letter at a time on our paper. We also talked about how if we don't know what a letter looks like we can go to the front of our journal and sing the ABC song while pointing at each letter. We stop at the letter we're looking to write and the journal will show us what it looks like.
I think our game day spiced things up just enough to spark more learning! I look forward to seeing you next week.
Writing Workshop this afternoon was a whirlwind of awesome. We read a few of my favorite mentor texts, talked about storytelling and writing generas, explored fun conventions such as the ellipsis (...) text size/location and color, and explored different illustration options. One of the books we read aloud was "Beep, Beep, Go to Sleep!" It's a book where a little boy is putting three robots down to sleep. The number of kids that related to the robots getting up multiple times made me hope for a more restful evening for all you parents out there! We also read my number one favorite, "Rhyming Dust Bunnies". There were two different versions written in writing workshop camp today. With cute fuzzy dust bunnies and speech bubbles the book is hard to resist, plus it encourages a lot of giggling.
Our focus for writing workshop is on fiction writing and telling stories. We talked about he main elements in a piece of fiction (characters, setting, problem, solution) and dissected the mentor texts as we read them aloud. We played a fun game from "Tell Me a Story" where we rolled story cubes and had to fill in the blanks for a few story starters. We played with funny pairings of characters and imagined all sorts of nonsense. The giggles were quite intense at this point in our discussion which led quite easily into what kind of stories we like to listen to and read - stories that make us feel an emotion, like happiness!
Students then got to work putting their ideas down on paper in their sloppy copy or rough draft. We worked out the kinks together however due to time constraints we didn't do too much illustration work in our sloppy copies. After a short recess break we pulled out the hard-backed books for kiddos that were ready to start working on their own real book. We talked about the cover and how the first page is usually a title page. I encouraged kids to start their story on the second page in. We read through their rough drafts and added correct spelling where needed to make reading easier. They all did amazing work in our time together and I hope they finish their books at home. I encouraged them to send me pictures or video of their completed books. You can post them over on our Facebook page at Facebook.com/InitiateLearning.
It was a fast paced adventure in storytelling where we explored ways to make vibrant, innovative, powerful, and intriguing stories. We looked for examples of crazy pairings in mentor texts and tried to add our own crazy twists into our stories.
Our Robotics 3 camp is off to a great start this week. Robotics 3 is a coding continuation of Robotics 2. We're exploring all the possibilities within EdBlocks (the basic coding language for Edison). We have a mixed bag of participants in Robotics 3 this time around. Some kids are coming right from Robotics 2 last week, others did Robotics 2 during Spring Break, and still others are jumping in for the first time. We started off our class by drawing what we think of when we are picturing robots. We had a fun variety of ideas come up. After each applicable idea I was able to show a video of a real life robot that is similar to what each student shared. We watched short video clips of a spider robot, a humanoid robot falling over, a humanoid robot walking and running successfully, and a lawn mowing robot. We reviewed the three parts that make a machine a robot (computer, sensors, and actuators) and reviewed how coding is telling the computer one step at a time how to do something.
We worked through a series of challenges to program our robot to avoid obstacles. We started with a base program that used the infrared sensor to detect an obstacle and stop the robot. Then we tried the program with a variety of obstacles for Edison. We explored why he didn't stop before hitting the clear Lego bricks and why he was pushed around the glass jar rather than stopping before hitting it. Then we worked on programming Edison to back up, turn around, and repeat the code so he could drive around without hitting anything. The final challenge was to have Edison alert us when he detects an obstacle. We did that by adding a beeping sound. At home you could try the same program and have Edison flash his lights to alert us instead.
We also worked on programming Edison to bounce within borders. That means that he uses the light sensor on the bottom to detect when he runs into a black line and then backs up, turns around, and drives off again. It's like an invisible fence - only it's a black line on a table. Some of our group was able to start playing with making music with Edison. This gets a little tricky for some and those kids that play the piano definitely have an advantage. We're working with coding blocks that have 1/8th notes, 1/4 notes, half notes, and whole notes, and we have to pick out the right note from a staff picture. It's a little challenging, but with a litter perseverance we'll get Edison to play a variety of songs. We'll pick up with music first thing on Thursday so we'll all get the chance to make him "sing".
We are having such a fun time in our K1 Prep camp this summer. I get to work with this wonderful group of kids and watch them grow a ton in a short amount of time. We're reading and writing and jumping and singing all day long.
Today was super fun because we started talking about sorting and classifying objects. I dumped out a giant container of coins on the floor and then showed the kids a penny. We talked about it is worth one cent and is copper colored. Then all the kids were sent on a penny hunt to gather all of the pennies out of the pile. We continued, one coin at a time, with the nickle (fat and medium sized), dime (tiny coin), and the quarter (the biggest of the 4). This is a FANTASTIC activity to do at home with this age group. Pull out your pile of coins and have them sort them into 4 groups. Use the teaching moment to talk about names and values of coins.
We also started "Guess My Secret Rule" but didn't get to play a ton yet. It's exactly like the Sesame Street "One of these things doesn't belong" game. Pick 4 items where 3 have a characteristic that is the same and the fourth doesn't match that characteristic. The kids have to pick which one doesn't fit the group AND tell why. The telling why part is super important (it doesn't match because it's a different color/shape/size/thickness/etc). This game is really fun to do with the contents of a silverware drawer - I plan to do exactly that on Thursday morning with this group :).
This afternoon the Robotics 2 camp finished up with a dance a party. We reviewed computational thinking and how we will be more successful if we work out one piece of code at a time. Then we jumped into our challenge of using all 4 drive directions to make Edison dance. I was impressed with how many different varieties of turns, twists, speed, and length of time were used. The kids thought it was fantastic that they could pick a favorite song, I could play it over the speaker system, and they could have their Edison "dance" to the music.
Our dance code was a fun adventure in creative coding. I could see the "choreography" happening in some student's minds as they thought about how they would like Edison to move to a Greatest Showman song or how would Edison do the Floss dance?
After our break we learned how to make Edison turn on and off his lights. We played around with the code to make Edison dance and turn on and off the lights. Our main coding focus today was on the Loop block, which makes the code repeat either a set number of times or forever. The kids discovered the Look block on Wednesday so it was fairly easy for them to incorporate it into their dancing code. We even learned that you can put a Loop block around a few blocks, add more blocks, and put a loop block around all of it.
We had an amazing time learning together. It was a ton of fun to watch the kids become confident in loading code onto Edison and playing around with writing the code. It is awesome that Edison is open ended so all these kids can go home and continue creating new code challenges for their Edison. Here are some example challenges to get your kids to do (or come up with your own!):
Drive around and obstacle, such as a cup or pencil case
Drive around the border of a desk without driving off the edge
Create a maze on a large piece of paper
Create a maze using building blocks
Share with me what amazing challenge you can make your Edison do! Share a video, pictures, or even just text on Facebook.com/InitiateLearning I can't wait to see what you can accomplish!
Summer MakerSpace camp was illuminating! I loved having the opportunity to teach our makers about circuits and how to add light to their creations. Day 2 of summer MakerSpace camp started with the challenge to add light to a creation and these kids did not disappoint. Everyone had a different idea of a project that they wanted to make and we all got right to work.
Some of the ideas were super challenging and after spending some time trying to create a lantern together a small group of children and I decided to shelve the idea and work on something else for a bit. The project even stumped me. In MakerSpace we accept that things won't always work and it's a safe place to craft and explore something new. I was really impressed when wiring started happening that mimicked our paper circuits and resembled the simple circuits we were making during spring break.
Overall, Makerspace was a smashing success. Within the two day camp we saw collaboration, exploration, creative thinking, and authentic problem solving. We saw students become masters and share their knowledge with others. We saw students engaging in creative projects and stretching beyond their comfort zones. In Makerspace we value creativity and love the creations. Very well done!
This morning as our K1 kiddos arrived I asked them to practice writing their name - the first thing they will do every day at my house. Once I got downstairs I pulled out the trampoline and asked who would be the first one to do 20 jumps after finishing writing their name? Would you believe that we finished writing our names about 7x faster than the last three times they've been over? (Unpictured kids were simply jumping with such fury that the blurry picture wasn't worth saving.)
We moved next into writing in our journals about our favorite toy. When we came to a word we didn't know how to write the whole class helped to say the word, catch it in the air, and stretch it out slowly so the writer could get the correct letters written down.
As each child finished their writing they moved into puzzles. It was fun to watch them work together and help each other try the harder puzzles.
This week our math is all about shapes and location words. We traced the basic shapes and then cut them out. We read a fun location word book and put the hiking character in the correct location on each page.
I was really impressed with everyone's reading today. We worked through our lessons and learned some new books. Keep up the fantastic work at home. I have them for such a short time that A TON of their learning is happening with your help at home. Thank you!
The kids in Robotics 2 brought some amazing passion and energy to camp today! I am incredibly impressed with what we were able to accomplish. They were able to recall the parts of a robot with the correct vocabulary and they were able to transition into a more independent situation where students didn't need me to remind them step-by-step how to program the Edison Robots. This led to a fantastic situation for any classroom - Individualized Learning. The kids who where working on mastering the decimal form of a percentage of a second were coached through that. Students who mastered the math quickly were able to move on and challenge themselves by adding more complicated code.
When we were ready to put Edison through a maze we spent time talking about computational thinking. Computational thinking is the process of doing one step at a time. First we want Edison to go forward, then turn left, then go forward, then turn right, then go forward. Just being able to list the steps in order is a skill to master. As we worked on the code I stressed that THE ONLY WAY anyone can be successful at writing code in the beginning is to write one step of code at a time, test it, adjust it, and make it absolutely correct before adding the next step of code.
Then we learned how Edison can interact with drawn lines. Edison has a line tracking sensor and can follow a black line or respond to a black line. We learned a few more coding blocks such as "Speed" and "Turn OFF the Motors" all while playing with following our own drawn trails - a simple black marker and large sheet of paper does the trick! These are all activities that can me built upon at home after camp ends. We spent some time today talking about how coding robots is a fairly complicated task and we will hardly ever get the math right on the first try.
After each task we sat as a group on the sofa and reflected on what went well and not so well and why we thought that. We also brainstormed different ideas to troubleshoot problems such as accidentally poking holes in the paper that then cause Edison to get stuck! I am continually impressed with the enthusiasm and perseverance that is shown by kids in robotics camps - something about robots helps us be a little more brave to try, fail, and try again. Keep up the great work!
These kids did some amazing work with paper circuits today. Each child created their own paper circuits book to demonstrate a simple circuit, a parallel circuit, and a switch. We used copper tape and LED stickers. We'd make the circuit on a blank page and then turn back a page and draw a design that incorporated the light that was shining through the paper.
We talked about how a simple circuit can only power one light and how a parallel circuit can have as many lights as there is space. We talked about the positive and negative sides of a battery and how they have to match up to the correct end on the sticker lights.
Then we dove into crafting and creating. With all the supplies available students worked on helicopters, message delivery systems, pencil holders, cards, and art. They all did a fantastic job!
