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.
