Winter Camps

Happy Thanksgiving Week everyone!  Winter Camp registration will open on Thanksgiving day at www.InitiateLearning.net Be sure to sign up early because spots will go fast!  Check out the amazing line up:

Robot Competition Trophy Winners

Since the beginning of August I have been meeting with 15 fantastic humans ages 8-14.  We met once, twice, even three times a week as we all learned what First Lego League (FLL) was together.  It was a giant learning curve.  None of us had ever participated or seen what happens in FLL but we gave it our all.  Previously just teachers in the same building teaching the same subject to different age groups, Ms. Allshouse and I became teammates in coaching our two teams to success.  Many of our students hadn't touched a LEGO EV3 robot before.  Some students had minimal experience with the robot and a couple students had explored programming.

Through our season we learned to build and code EV3 robots, we researched and developed innovative solutions for long term space travel, and we focused on teamwork, coopertition (cooperation and competition smashed together - it's a FLL thing), and mostly FUN!  We ate crickets of all varieties as one team researched the sustainability of crickets for protein in space.  We invited friends, family, and professionals from a variety of fields to listen to our research presentation and share their feedback and knowledge.  We learned.  We grew.  We worked hard.

All our effort led to an amazing experience at the Denver North Regional Qualifier this last Saturday.  Throughout the day the excitement rose as students, parents, and coaches realized that both our teams had a chance for some real success.  The adrenaline shot to space when the Techno Trees team launched into first place in the Robot Game. Universal S.T.E.M. had judges writing puns about jumping out of their seat for an innovative solution for long term space travel: Crickets for Protein! At the end of the day this amazing group of hard workers took home 3 trophies. Universal STEM took the first place Project trophy, Techno Trees took the first place Robot Performance trophy and the second place Robot Design trophy.  Universal STEM also ranked 4th in Robot Performance. What a fantastic way to finish the season!

I couldn't be more proud of all the hard work and dedication these families, students, mentors, coaches, and administrators put in to create two trophy winning teams.  Thank you, from the bottom of my heart to everyone who put in hours of time and resources to help us along our FLL journey.  Many of our students are already planning big for next year.

As a side note: yes, that is my child pouting in the last team picture with the trophies.  He cried the whole way home.  It was a long day (nearly 11 hours when it was said and done).  It was his first experience with a team in an environment with so much adrenaline (as it was with many of our students).  And though he was completely exhausted and ready to go home he was sad that it was over, sad that there were no more practices ("I don't even care that the practices are on Saturday anymore!"), sad that he had built a relationship with teammates and now that could change ("Can we please keep the same people on the same teams next year?"), and sad that his once hated "itchy" shirt now held so much meaning that he wanted to sleep in it and wear it every day to remember his joy and pride in participating in such an amazing experience.  That is why I left him in the photo with his sad face, because it tells such a strong story of growth for the youngest member of our team. I love him with all my heart and I'm proud of his accomplishments. 

Thanksgiving Week Camps

I am so excited to announce the launch of a new website to make signing up for camps a breeze!  Check it out by clicking the "Home" button above or heading over to http://www.initiatelearning.net

Thanksgiving break is headed our way and I'm excited to announce 2 new camps and a repeat of a favorite!
Wednesday, November 21, 9am-noon MakerSpace
Wednesday, November 21, 1pm-4pm EdScratch 1
Friday, November 23, 9am-noon EdScratch 2

Here are the basics:

MakerSpace: Do you have a builder, crafter, or tinker-er that loves creating things? Imagine the cardboard challenge on hyperdrive and that’s what this three-hour camp is about. Makerspace is the creation of robots, cars, toys, and battery powered awesome. We will learn to connect basic motors to wheels, propellers, and gears onto student’s invented creations (made with recycled materials). We’ll learn about circuits and paper/cardboard crafting. Students will be bringing these inventions home to explore more and show you the amazing things they can immediately apply in their own home tinkering time. Students will need to bring cleaned recycled materials to class, no glass items please.

EdScratch 1 (Robot Programming): Join Miss Amanda for EdScratch 1. Whether you’ve programmed before or not, this is a great starting place for students to learn to program robots. We’ll start with some robot basics, including teaching Edison to play soccer and move into introducing the EdScratch programming language. Building your first program in EdScratch is easy! Just drag and drop the blocks you want together. EdScratch is much more complicated than EdBlocks, however, so expect to challenge your brain to make Edison accomplish even more than what was possible in Miss Amanda’s summer camp series. Students will need to bring one Edison robot with fully charged batteries. If you don’t have your own Edison robot I have extras available for $40 each.

EdScratch 2 (Robot Programming): Ready to dive in and really get programming your own robot? Join Miss Amanda for EdScratch 2. Using the vertical block-based visual programming language based on Scratch we’ll explore computational thinking, the input-process-output cycle and the parameters of inputs and outputs on Edison, grouping blocks (writing programming for Edison to do two things at once), bugs and debugging syntax and logical errors. Students will need to bring one Edison robot with fully charged batteries. If you don’t have your own Edison robot I have extras available for $40 each.

I can't wait to work with your kiddos!  Only 6 spots per class! Sign Up HERE!

Thanksgiving Week Camps - Get Excited!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to announce Thanksgiving week camps!  There will be morning and afternoon camps on Wednesday and a morning camp on Friday.  Details and registration will be released and open on November 1st!

September Robotics

We are having a blast in our Robotics classes at the Options School.  My younger classes are learning about simple machines and why they are important in order to build robots and my MakerSpace class is exploring the Engineering Design Cycle with POCKET ROCKETS.  What could be more fun than watching something explode in school?  Be sure to check out the short video below!

September's Junk Robots

I love that I get to teach robotics on Monday's throughout the whole school year.  In September we started off our robotics classes with Junk Robots.  This is an activity I love to do.  It gets kids right to work with a variety of materials and their imagination to create their own robot.  We learn very quickly where certain supplies are available throughout our room, we share and take turns immediately (who know 5 glue guns wasn't enough for our classes, time to order more!), and students are able to take their creations home that day.

 Nothing gets students more excited about robots than being able to take their own robot home on the first day.  We then follow up with a lesson about how all the Legos and robots in the classroom belong to the school and have to stay there - that is a bummer, but it's the way everyone can learn.

Aren't some of these robots amazing?

Options Kindergarten - Apples in September

August 31st was our first day of school at Options.  Options is the name of the school I teach at on Monday and Friday each week.  We are a homeschool enrichment program that students are registered for and attend one day a week.  On Fridays I teach Kindergarten, First Grade Robotics, and K-5 Musical Theatre.  It's such a fun day!

In September, we kicked off Kindergarten by starting our red water beads "blood experiment" in the sensory bin. We read an amazing book about apples and then got to taste test 8 different types of apples to see which we liked the best.  We cut open apples for apple stamping and practiced the numbers 1-10 with play dough.

 The next week we made applesauce, it was REALLY yummy.  We painted and labeled the parts of apples and worked on an apple life cycle.  We've had a blast so far!