Lego Robotics

Tonight was our first session of Lego Robotics. I'm coaching a team of first and second grade boys, including Liam and three others. Let's refer to them as Mikey, Mouth and Chunk. (Yes, that would make my child Data, and based on his behavior tonight I think it fits.) They worked well together, were respectful toward me, and all said they had a great time.

Here's how it works. The kids use an instruction book, quite similar to the typical picture instructions that come with a box of Legos, to build a simple robot. It connects to an engine with a drive shaft that can rotate two directions and various speeds. The engine connects to a laptop via USB, and the laptop runs a simple, icon-based program. The kids can drag tiles representing functions (start, spin, play a sound, repeat, stop) into a row and then play the program. After a few by-the-book programs, my team got creative, modifying the robot and making it do crazy stuff, erupting in laughter. Data almost fell off his chair, he laughed so hard.

Did I mention the team named themselves the Ninja Lego Ducks of Doom? At first they were going to be Evil Ninja Lego Ducks of Doom, but I commented that frankly they didn't seem all that evil, and Mikey conceded the point.