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!

K1 Prep Wrap Up

Thursday was our last day of Kindergarten and First Grade prep camp.  We celebrated our learning by completing our growth mindset art: The Power to LEARN is in MY hands.  I love how they turned out.

 We wrote about what we'd like to play with at Miss Amanda's house - a real treat because the standard toys have been off limits for the majority of our time together.

We ended the day with a coloring page, "In a WORLD where You can be anything, BE KIND."  The most important thing I stressed throughout this camp was that their learning is up to them.  I hope with all my heart that they take on the next year ahead with a desire to tackle challenges and work on the hard problems.

K1 Prep - 7/31/18

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.

Robotics 4 - EdPrinter Build

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!

Robotics 4 - EdCrane Build

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:

K1 Prep - Penny, Penny Coins Galore

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.

Robotics 4 - EdRobo Claw

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.

Robotics 4 - EdDigger

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:

K1 Camp - Using Math to Facilitate Writing

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 - EdTank

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!

Summer Robotics 3 Wrap Up

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!