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: