Improving Our STEAM Skills

We started our year off by improving our programming skills with Cybot and discovering its advanced features. We also introduced a new robot to our adventures: 'Evo-bot'. Besides that we took apart and put together some toys to learn about the different parts and their functions.

Who's our new robot-friend?

We needed to go through an obstacle course to be able to save our new robot-friend and test our programming skills while having fun.

In our activities we have fun, because we can play games that make the learning with robots more than just programming. We take our adventures outdoors to feel the achievement of earning the new robot by applying skills such as: coding, maths, teamwork, communication, patience, perseverance and gross motor skills.

After going through the obstacles by working as a team we saved our new robot-friend Evobot. A new advanced robot introduced to the team.

What can Evo-bot do?

It's important to understand that Evo-bot (Evolution Robot - From Clementoni) is an advanced level, therefore it needs more adults help for the kids in these early ages.

Evo-bot helps us improve our spatial skills while polishing our programming abilities. We learned how to work with the interface of the programming mode in the tablet to make it move and show different faces expressions.

Evo-bot is the biggest robot, therefore it can be very appealing for the kids, but they still need extra help if they really want to take the best of it. Nevertheless is a great opportunity for parents to learn together with their kids and let them explain why they've learned, adults can also benefit from this in a variety of ways.

What's inside a toy?

Firstly, I would like to emphasize that the kids are taught to be very careful with tools and that can only be used with the supervision of an adult. During these activities we also learn what we can and can't do when  taking apart an old toy. 

Things to keep in mind when taking apart a toy:

- Can't use tools without mom, dad, or caregiver.

- We can't take apart new toys, only old ones that we don't use anymore (like the ones used in school).

- If something is rusty is better not to touch it with our bare hands, if so wash hands immediately with soap.

- After handling batteries we should not touch our faces and wash our hands with soap as soon as possible.

We also compared the toys inside parts to our robots, we learned that parts like the speaker and battery case we're the main things they had in common.

How to follow assembly instructions?

To explore our engineering abilities we started to build a new toy made out of wood and had to start reading and understanding assembly instructions to do it. In this activity we practiced our maths abilities, critical thinking skills, teamwork, basic reading and  fine motor skills. It's fun and very interesting to understand that most of the world that surrounds us is made out of machines built by men, with the help of this kind of activities the kid develops a curiosity for how the world that he/she lives is built.

Here's a list of educational videos used in class to further understand the world of robotics:

Robotics Crash Course

https://youtu.be/8wHJjLMnikU

Real-life Robots

https://youtu.be/_U21fT8VLp0