Homeschool on the Run!

It is a bit of a shock to have a child turning 10, double digits and all.  It is such a great age and I’d love to freeze her right here! 

For her birthday she wanted a Cricket, the computer gadget that you can program to make your creations become animated.  It uses similar computing programming technology to  Scratch, so I am hoping she will be able to use it quite easily.

Aunty bought her the Lego MIndstorms NXT-G Robotics kit (which is based on the Cricket technology) and this will allow her to make robots of all kinds using Mindstorm lego pieces and the NXT graphical computing software.  If she takes off with this she might decide to learn the NXT language, giving her more precision in what she can program her robots to do.  I found a great user friendly book that shows you how to make zoo animal robots using the Mindstorms kit.  She can’t wait to start.

This will be great preparation for the FIRST Lego League during which she will have to construct robots.  The theme this year is “Smart Move” so they may have to design a new type of vehicle?   We also previewed the topics for next years Destination ImagiNation and there is a robotics challenge that the children in Chuckle’s team have chosen to pursue. 

It looks like this year could be the year of the robot!

Hopefully I will have some photos of her creations soon!

June 3rd, 2009 | Category: Family | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL